This is Gwenn:

She is a 10 year old Fresian/Oldenborg mix and she is the other horse that I am doing stuff with right now to see if we hit it off. Where Angel is more withdrawn and not as expressive, Gwenn is more bold and expressive. Except Gwenn was one of the last horses in the field (out of 22 horses) to come and greet me or investigate me. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that she approached me and walked with me for bit, but when she did, it interested me, so I asked if I could work with her as well.

Before that point, anytime Gwenn saw me in the field with my camera, she would pin her ears at me, even though I never was close to her. I respected this and for the most part, ignored her. I did, however, sneak this picture of her one morning…

As of now I have not done a whole lot with Gwenn. I have done some agility with her at liberty, which was the first thing I did with her, and it was quite fun. She doesn’t have the anixety that Angel has, so she is more willing to try things and at a higher tempo. We have done a couple of short liberty sessions, and she seems very interested, but we need to work out how to communicate with each other. She seems to think I am asking her to do more than I really am and gets a little flustered if I bring up the tempo from a walk to a jog, but overall both times were good.

I can see that she needs to see me as a leader, which was quite evident with our bit of discussion we had about whether or not it was time to eat dandelions and grass when I took her on a very short forest walk. We were walking and I looked at something, and she decided to drag me over to the grass, however, once she figured out that I meant what I said with no eating grass and followed through (it took a few minutes…) she stopped, and at another spot, thought about it again, but stopped herself.

I am not sure if she is the horse for me, but there is something about her that interests me, but I am not sure what it is. However, if we are going to be friends, she needs to make friends with my camera. We might be getting there, but if I have my camera with me, then she really isn’t interested in me. For example, I was taking pictures of her out in the paddock, and she came and greeted me, saw that I had my camera, and turn away from me again. I then later took this photo

After a few minutes of me getting closer and her ignoring me, she stopped drinking, lifted her head, pinned her ears and came quickly out of the water towards me. She was, however, going for the horse that was beside me. I should mention, even though she pins her ears, I have never felt threatened by her. But the other day, I was sitting in front of her with my camera on the other side of the fence, and she just hung out with me as I took these.

She was not at all pissy about my camera, so I will mark that as an improvement.

I am not sure if I am going to do the Horsefullness Liberty Training with her, but maybe I will. She is also used in the riding school a tiny bit, and I believe she will be the horse I will be learning to ride one. So I wouldn’t be sticking a 100% to it if I do. We will see. Either way, I will be blogging and Instagramming about the journey.