I have mentioned that something exciting for the horses was happening in one of my other videos and now that something is officially complete, since last week Friday already. The horses have their very own stable! It is brand new, built from scratch from the choice of my design and is now ready for two beautiful orphans to move in. A lot of time, effort and money went into the building of this abnormally large stable but I know that it will be worth it in the long run.
If you want to see footage of this stable, you can find it here on my YouTube channel!
Before, they had their temporary green structure, made of tall gum poles, shade netting, and bits of wire to try keep the material from flapping. And before, when the weather was bad, we did our best to lead them in there and eventually they started to become comfortable with the run down structure, especially Da Vinci. Even when there was no bad weather, I have seen him standing in there around sunset time, just chilling with his head lowered, probably asleep.
Now things have changed and drastically improved for them with this stable made of brick and concrete. Da Vinci was once again the first one to get comfortable in there, while Phantom hesitantly follows after him. Now, a week later, I saw them in there this evening at sunset and went to go check on them and I was surprised to see how relaxed Phantom was. I am so glad they like their new home. Now that that is up, we have officially taken down the horrendous temporary fix, knowing that they have something much better to walk into when they want to.
Having a proper stable means adding stuff and turning it into a proper home for them. They now need shavings for the concrete floor to make it soft for them, they need nails or hooks or something where we can hang their hay nets and salt lick, they need somewhere where we can hang fly catchers and their halters and ropes and things. It’s all so exciting, basically moving in at the same time! The first night I slept in my new house, was the first night the horses also spent in their new house, the 01st November of this year. I thought that was quite special.
At least now they have proper cover to go under when it’s heavy rainstorms, which has been this week actually and when winter comes back round (my worst season), they will have somewhere to keep them warm properly, which also means no more garage nights (although there was only one of those). I am really happy for them and I think they are going to grow to love it more than they will ever care to admit and I know how much they appreciate everything that is done for them, they just cannot express their gratitude in words.
It really warms my heart to be able to improve their quality of life after knowing where they came from (the orphanage for horses) and especially not knowing their past 100%. They can now show off their new stable to the other horses that ride past in the day and brag about the landing in the lap of luxury, their bums landing in butter by being adopted by me.
My point of view is that their purpose is not to serve me by letting me ride them, but to live a life of as much comfortability and happiness as can possibly be achieved as a domestic animal. They have their big piece of land, they have access to fresh water and shady trees and now they have the choice of going in a lovely, luxurious stable that was built just for them. I think that’s a pretty nice life for a horse if you ask me.
Of course I will still try and ride them but that is not my priority for them and is definitely not a deal breaker, especially with Da Vinci who supposedly has a physical injury somewhere.
I am just super grateful for them and that I have made the biggest difference in two horses’ lives so far.
