I just got a call from our neighbor to the west telling me she had seen one of our horses out of our field. I didn’t immediately panic because where one horse goes, the others would follow, and I could see Rags calmly grazing from the window. Even if Hap had jumped out of the field, which Rags couldn’t do, Rags wouldn’t have been so calm about what he would have viewed as abandonment.
However, as I expected, I counted three heads almost immediately when I got out to the horse field. I also saw a rider walking near our fence line. I shouted to make sure she was okay and she said she had dismounted voluntarily but let go of the reins. The horse, evidently a dark horse like Hap, had headed home for his barn.
So I turned the horses out in the new field for two hours. We’ve had enough precipitation recently there is actually something resembling grass out there.