Happy second Birthday Artemis! It was her birthday on Thursday (25th) and like last year, we decided to be crazy horse people and celebrate it. We mostly have fun being silly about it and my poor pony has to suffer our torture.
I still can't believe it's been two years. I feel like I've had her forever but at the same time, it feels like she was a bratty little weanling just yesterday. I told her she was an adult now so she couldn't be silly and scared of stupid things. Apparently she took my words to heart.
I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but there's a creek that runs through her pasture. Usually it goes underneath the road but recently E has had to do some landscaping because of some flooding. So he's torn up the road and made the creek impossible to cross. However, just for us, he put in a little bridge. It's not very wide, but it's sturdy enough to carry a person and a horse. The first time we were going to catch Artemis since he put it in was on her birthday. I wasn't really sure how she was going to react since most horses don't tend to like bridges.
I have to say, she surprised me. I led her up to it (she was a little unnerved by the construction, but there are two massive dirt hills were there used to be nothing) and she paused briefly to smell it. After a second she started to follow me across. E covered the bridge in dirt to make it less scary, but it was soft so she sunk a bit. She didn't like that so she trotted the last few steps across it and then stopped. I was impressed she didn't fight going across it at all.
Next we brought her up and cleaned her up. I'd promised L, the stable owners' daughter, that this was the one day she could braid Artemis' mane and tail (I'm not a big fan of horse's with braids) so she got to work. She put a running braid into Artemis' mane and a fishtail into her tail. It looked nice, even my braid-hating self had to admit.
Since last year she wore a birthday crown, this year we got her a birthday tiara. She hated it. It fit between her ears and she kept shaking her head and knocking it off. We managed to get a few pictures before we stopped torturing her.
She looked ridiculous, it was great. Then L instructed me in making Artemis a "cake". It was made into her bucket and had a handful of treats on the bottom, a layer of sweet feed, a layer of our other feed pellets, and then another layer of sweet feed. On top was another handful of treats. L was very proud of it. As much as Artemis enjoyed it, she did not get to eat it all, I didn't want her to get sick. So her mother got to finish it.
That was all the birthday celebrations for Artemis. We put her back out into the pasture. She couldn't figure out how to get back across the creek but I have a video of that I'll post another time.
I'm very excited that she's two now. Once I'm up to it (arm-wise) her work load will increase a little. She'll learn how to lunge, get more saddle training in (on the ground) among other things. I have no immediate plans to ride her. I want to try and get as much done on the ground as I can first, and I think I have to build my confidence back up a bit as well. For now her life will stay the same, hanging out in the pasture with her buddies. I'll ride her when I ride her, we still have a lot to do before that point.
Oh and at two years old, she stands at 14.3 hands. I was really hoping she'd hit 15 hands for her birthday but she just didn't make it.
