A Moose and a Sunrise

Sounds like a drink order in Alaska, doesn't it?

I just wanted to show a decent picture before I showed all the bad ones. Come to find out, it's a lot easier to capture a pretty sunrise on my blackberry, than it is to capture a pretty Moose.

Or to capture the prettiness of a Moose. My Moose. Anyway, here are the crappy photos of my gorgeous boy, which you can't tell is gorgeous, because of the crappy photos.


I had to run errands last night, so by the time I got home the only thing I had time for was a quick grooming for Moose.

I faux-tied him, for the third time. I'm not sure what the "right" way is to teach a horse to tie, but the way I do it is to "faux-tie" them up lots of lots of times, until one day I just tie them up the regular way and they're fine! Now, this doesn't mean I let them just drag the line off if they decide to leave. Usually I have a hold of it, and if, like the last time I "tied" Moose up, he decides to have a kitty and jump and rear and carry on, then I hold onto the lead, through the fence, so he has a little give (and doesn't feel trapped), but he learns that a fit won't get him anywhere--he has to still stay "tied-up." It's worked really well so far *knocking on wood* and eventually, once they get the hang of being tied up, they get tied up for long periods of time (preferably to a "patience tree") so they learn to be "patient" as well. The way I see it, if a thousand-pound animal wants to escape, he's going to escape. The trick to me, is to teach them that it's not even in the realm of possiblities. So far, so good *knocking on wood again*.

Moose is easy anyway. He's a lover, not a fighter. He's oddly calm for a halter-bred weanling colt, as displayed in this photo:

Paula, Bambi, and Fabian were all running around like banshees, but Moose just stood there calm as could be, half-asleep, despite the ruckus. He was quite bored, actually.

That doesn't mean he's perfect, though. He still needs some more "patience" work.

Overall, though, he's a super-good boy. I got him brushed and his feet cleaned, then let him back in with his buddy Fabian, just in case he wanted to run around with the banshees as well.

Home boy did run around a tad bit...

But approximately 30 seconds later, he was at his dish, waiting for his feed.

And yes, he's very hip-high. He's a growing boy! He's now 13.2 1/2H at the hip, 13.1H at the withers--not bad for a not-quite 6-month old colt. Right now he's as tall at the hip as my POA show gelding was! In case you're wondering, Moose string tests to 16.1H.

By the way, see the old chair in my truck bed? It was a great find and my next restoration project, but I'll cover that on my next post.

So why didn't Moose want to dance? He didn't have any moosic. Ha!

OK, I'll stop now. Catch you on the flip side ('cause I'm already there),