From what I imagine is Hap’s point of view, I took him home to my trainer’s barn yesterday, after he spent five months with Rags and Smoke. The young woman who had a half lease on him last fall is leasing him again for the summer. In the ten years that I’ve owned him, he has spent less than a year at our place.
After we allowed him to work off some energy in the arena, we turned him out with his buddies in the gelding field. I’ve seen some horses quail under the curious attentions of a herd, but Hap seemed to enjoy the horses pressing up around him. There was remarkably little squealing and striking. It probably helped that Hap was the second most dominant horse when he left, and good friends with the dominant gelding, Havoc.
I always flinch a little when I turn a horse out with others for the first time after a break. I keep telling myself that it is good for their little psyches, but the rough and tumble can be very hard on their bodies.