Beautiful day this December 18. It is not always that way here in central Alberta so I decided to go on one of my fairly rare winter rides. Eddie is living in the corrals as he is quite convinced that he is the “great leader”. And he isn’t good at it.

Some history.

Dreamweaver wasn’t getting much riding and he is way too nice a horse to be just left in the field so we lent him to some folks for their girl to learn to ride. He was gone for a couple of years. When he returned we had just bought a new horse, Rio, a mare. We put the two of them in together away from the other horses for a couple of weeks just to make sure we weren’t bringing in some virus our herd wasn’t immune to.

We didn’t quite realize that Eddie was fuming mad about the new mare being with Dreamweaver.

One day my old brain forgot to tie the gate correctly and Ed got out with Dreamweaver and Rio and beat up Dreamweaver. Bad. We were shocked. None of our horses have acted like that. Not even the stallions.

The upside of this is that Eddie being in the corrals is pretty handy for going for a ride. The herd is living out on the half section.

Saddled him up. Got on. Eddie really wanted to go out on the pasture where the herd was so off we headed. Beautiful day. The ravens came to check us out. We passed Rio by the waterer. No big deal. Eddie loves her and certainly would have liked to stop for a visit but he continued on when I asked him to.

The horses were west of the bedding pile so we went the other way down to the end of the silage pit. Suddenly I heard a horse galloping up behind us. Hawk. The youngest gelding who is way below Ed in the pecking order.

We stop to visit Hawk and every time Ed turns to head towards the herd over the hill, Hawk stands in front of him and challenges him. I’m confused. Hawk doesn’t challenge Ed. He is usually very cautious around Ed. Next thing I look and Rio who is the all-time meekest horse in the herd is 10 feet away approaching with her ears pinned back.

Ed isn’t really concerned. Would have happily pushed past both of them and headed over the hill. By now the yearling filly has joined us and is bucking and kicking and playing around us. I decided to lower my risk of getting kicked by heading out to the pasture.

We can head out to the big pasture but there are 2 very out of character horses making sure we don’t head up over the bedding pile.

In the end I can think of no answer for this strange behavior other than the herd has decided that Ed is not welcome. I’m sure given his freedom Ed would be over the hill and enforcing his rules but it was really interesting.

They are pretty brave when they know I have control over Ed. And they certainly know he is a danger to some of the herd members. And… it appears that my young Hawk horse is working his way up the herd of broodmares and old geldings. Hope he is a better leader than Eddie.