Horse Camp

Well it's done! The Spyder has gone off to "Horse Camp."

Now, for those of you who don't know about Horse Camp, it's what we call my friend's place about three hours away. She has more horses than I do, several geldings and a colt about a month older than Spyder. I on the other hand, only have Spyder's dam and a pony mare.

Not real conductive for a youngster. They need an environment where they can learn horse manners from other horses and grow into model citizens.

Enter: Horse Camp. My friend very kindly agreed to host Spyder for a few months, so he can learn these manners from his new big brothers.

Saturday morning they arrived, hauling a trailer. Spyder of course has never seen a trail before, but he didn't seem overly concerned, even with the loud and potentially scary noises it makes. We let him have a look, sniffing and looking inside for a bit. Then we introduced an entirely new maneuver: stepping up. He was terribly confused at first as to what we wanted, but he spent some time with a hoof on the trailer floor, then two front hooves, thinking about this. Eventually with a bit of help, in he went!

He was a little startled, but very calm and collected about the entire thing. We let him stand for a little while, then I walked him out of the trailer, introducing stepping down. He took it pretty well, and in no time we had him back in the trailer. Time to go!

It was a long three hour drive, nerve-wracking for me, but Spyder appeared mostly unconcerned. We arrived and unloaded without much incident and walked around, stretching his legs, then took him into the barn. That's when the neighing started! He talked to all of her horses and called for Jetta, who of course was back near home. He was a little nervous, but he didn't act out.

We introduced him to the stall and he drank water and nibbled at the hay net. He was unhappy looking. We went inside for a bit and came back out to feed all of her horses. Now it was obvious Spyder was not feeling well. The stress from the day had given him a tummy ache. He was not running a fever and had good gut sounds, but he was distressed, kicking his belly and crying. It was the same behavior he'd shown after a strong rainstorm, the first he'd ever experienced, which stressed him out a little.

We gave him a bit of pain reliever and he soon calmed down, and when we returned later that night to check on him, he was eating hay calmly.

The next day he was very excited to come out of the stall. We walked around, then went to check out the pasture and look at things. He was still quite talkative, but continued to listen well for the most part.

We then introduced him first to Icee, a large three year old Quarter Horse gelding, and Tiger, a Mustang gelding.


Icee and Spyder seemed to get along fairly well, while Tiger seemed a little more irritated with the new youngster. We spent a little more time with Spyder, then we put him back into the stall and said our goodbyes. He'll be allowed into the pasture when my friend can keep an eye on him just to make sure all goes well, and then likely he'll continue to be pastured 24/7 except for when he's brought in for feeding, much like he was here.

On the whole, he behaved marvelous. I have no doubt he'll soon fit right in and have a great time out there with all the other horses. And I'll likely be going out there next month, and even if I don't make it, in January for sure, when we'll be taking him to get gelded.

But it was very hard to leave him.