Weaning Janet

A dirty, winter-shaggy Janet enjoys spring greens while running loose.

Miss Janet, our nearly-two-year-old paint filly, has been running beside her dam since birth. Separated briefly for farrier visits and such, the two have always become reunited with enthusiasm.

Now that spring is in full swing here, indeed haying season is practically here, everyone wants to be on greener pastures. Well, Miss Janet got her wish a few days ago.

I brought her out on a lead to graze while beginning her end-of-winter grooming. Our horses are still shaggy from winter, although with the arrival of warm weather coats are thinning. Because I had not had the foresight to grab an actual halter and lead, Miss Janet came along on our usual lead: a couple of strands of baling twine tossed casually behind her ears. When she danced and pranced, I wrapped the twine over her nose and gathered the lot beneath her chin, but she still was under the most casual of controls.

At some point, after having filled much of a bucket with her rapidly-shedding coat, she ducked out of the baling twine restraint and made a break for freedom. I kicked myself (mentally) for having passed up opportunities to trade in the twine for a real, solid halter and lead. For probably an hour the filly enjoyed trotting around out of my reach. She would graze serenely until my chores brought me close, or I intentionally approached her, then she'd dance off a bit and resume grazing.

Miss Janet in her improvised enclosure beside Goldie, an alpaca.

After a while, though, I corralled her in a small enclosure, set in the deepest of grasses, attached to the alpaca enclosure. She stayed there happily for a good while, but not forever. No, when she got tired of that, she popped over the lowest of the fence panels (and it was low, more of a suggested boundary than an actual fence) and roamed free again.

I began thinking of her as a possible hunter/jumper prospect. Before the sun set, though, I settled her into an enclosure behind the garage--with fence panels tall enough the contain her and with her dam just across the driveway. She was somewhat distressed at the separation; however, being contained in a heavily-grassed paddock seemed okay to her, too, and she settled down. Periodically she would look over to her dam and appear anxious to leave the paddock, but the fence was high and she was still fenced-in when we went in for the night.

Miss Janet is being officially weaned. And it's high time, too.

Now, I'm starting to see visions of her sailing over poles and across brush jumps on a hunt course. Hmmm.