the senior horse, 5: don't mess with the boss mare!

This morning my husband came in from the barn to tell me that there had been some excitement sometime last night/early this morning.

An entire section of the barn, an exterior half-wall that makes up part of the barn overhang, had been kicked out. That half-wall was in need of some work. There were two holes in the Hardie Plank from previous kicks, and as are many things around here, it was On The List.

This morning it went to the top.

Based on the crime scene this is what I think happened:

Salina, the boss mare and resident goddess (and a senior at 28 years old) had come in from the pasture to relax under the shelter on the back of our barn and wait to be let into her area for morning hay.

An 11-year old painted pony gelding, who seems to be in the midst of trying to take over the herd in general, came in and moved in too close to the boss mare. I saw him stick his head over a stall door two days ago and bare his teeth at the black mare's rump. She responded with a double barrel kick to the stall wall and I am not kidding when I say that the pony did not move a centimeter. He has also been annoying the heck out of Keil Bay during the day, crowding into Keil's stall and not budging when Keil tells him to scram.

So, probably early this morning, when he moved in too close, Salina let loose with a double barrel kick and it completely shattered two panels of Hardie Plank. There were pieces strewn 25-30 feet back into the paddock.

The good thing about Hardie Plank is it does not splinter like wood does, so there were no sharp edges and Salina had one little scrape above the hock and one scrape on her forehead (I am guessing she spun around and scraped the stall door).

She also had one rear hoof that abscessed last year and the weak spot had just grown down to the toe area where it was very close to being ready to be trimmed away. I had looked at the fault line yesterday and wondered what our trimmer would do with it.

Guess what? He is coming today for our regular scheduled trims and Salina has basically done his work for him. When she kicked, the fault gave way and basically his job will be to clean up the edges.

As I did my investigation, Cody and Keil Bay lined up together in Keil's stall. "WE didn't do it!" was written all over their faces.

The pony was nowhere to be seen. Then I realized he was quite literally laying low in his stall, head and neck lowered so I couldn't easily see him over the wall.

Salina was happily munching hay in the barn aisle with her two donkey boys. "No problem here. I just did what needed to be done."

Which was put the pony in his place and move a barn project up to the top of my husband's list.

Salina, I salute you.

AND, further investigation reveals: another November Hill senior, Keil Bay, was also involved in the barn smashing incident. I still think the provocateur was the pony, but it appears upper level management had a smack down in the wee hours of the morning.