There's been big doings in my life, so I haven't been to the barn or updating. I'm currently at the family casa in RI because 1) I'm on vacation and 2) my dad had a heart attack scare early last weekend that got me up here Saturday morning. It turns out the chest pain wasn't a heart attack, but probably a complication of a previous car accident that left him with an intermittent esophageal motility impairment. Phew!

For an update, I have a video of Sherwood out in the arena with her first buddy! Dennis and I talked about which horse of the boys to first introduce her to, and Bandit won- hands down. An alpha who's old enough to know and teach manners, but not so aggressive that he'll pursue her into a breaking point of beat the snot out of her for kicks. He's also fast enough on his feet to get out of the way of her unskilled but pretty powerful kicks.

As you can see on the video, he doesn't put up with her shenanigans, but also lets her think about the stupid things she's done and how to NOT do them again. After the video is over, they stayed together in the arena for another 2 hours and there was no further trouble. I threw them some hay and they peacefully ate out of the same pile- with Jovi (the dark bay in the background) keeping watch.

Earlier that day, she proved she may be similar to another mare I used to ride- and loved to bits. Dan, a 15h gray Polish Arab mare, would have hissy fits if I didn't show up to ride/work with her every other day- minimum. Miss a week? You better buckle your helmet down tight because you were going for a RIDE! Although she never bit, kicked, dumped, or stomped me- as she did to many other people- if I didn't show up, she'd threaten to do so with mock bites, pinned ears, a half-hearted strike that missed by inches... Did I mention she was a horse that no one else wanted to deal with?

In any case, Sherwood was giving me some trouble when I got there Thursday - crankiness, pinning her ears, over-reacting to any input, incessant pawing on the crossties, yah de dah- and I marked it off to her getting more comfortable and now starting to show her true mareish colors. I mean, honestly, no mare is a much of a peach as this girl has been, right?? But, as soon as we went out and lunged for our standard 15 minutes and worked on some in-hand stuff in preparation for the show, she was back to being her peachy self. Even to the point of standing quietly for bug spray and grooming in the arena versus the aisle for prep to meet her Senor Bandito. Methinks it's a classic sign of the "Mare Work Bug."