TOABH: Idiosyncrasies

Dijon does a lot of weird things. I really could not count them all. He’s certainly a character. One of the weird things he does is stick his tongue out of the sides of his mouth. He does both sides and goes back and forth. At first, I thought it was a stress thing, but he does it when he’s waiting for food, when he’s being tacked up, if he’s bored being tied. It seems like it’s more of just a fidget activity for him.

He’s doing this during a flexion test

Nilla
She’s a mule, so one of the weird things about her is the noises she makes. She sort of winnies and sort of brays at the same time. Her version of a nicker is sort of like a hu hu hu noise. I need to get some video of this. Unfortunately, by the time I get my phone out, she’s always stopped.

She’s also really convinced that turning her head sideways will make you give her food.

Shasta

Shasta likes to grab anything within her reach. There’s a large tack truck that holds our blankets outside her stall. I frequently put things down on it thinking they’re far enough away from her and she will somehow get them. She has twice taken a drink of mine and thrown it on the ground once she realized it wasn’t horse food.

Wasn’t me, I’m all the way back here

For a while, Shasta had figured out how to get under her stall guard because the bottom parts weren’t attached. Nilla and Dijon only have straight chains because they don’t escape. Shasta would climb underneath the stall guard and walk off to get eat anything she could find. One time I was riding Dijon in the small arena by the barn and the Barn Owner asked if I knew Shasta was in Dijon’s stall eating his hay. She had a full hay net, but knew that would be there all night so she wanted to eat someone else’s hay. She also kept getting captured as soon as she walked off to eat stray hay by the hay barn so I think she figured out that if she was hiding in his stall, no one would catch her and put her back. It worked too as it took a while for someone to notice.