Lacy is 2 weeks old today, and as sweet as ever!

As I've mentioned before, her and her mama belong to our eldest daughter. Our daughter lives and breathes horses. She had her first riding lesson at age 4 and has never stopped dreaming of having her own horse ever since.

Now she has two!

Having a horse since it's a baby is such a wonderful thing. To know that we can get on top of any and all bad habits she might develope, before she really ever developes them! All our other horses have come to us with 'bad' habits. My mare came to us when she was 7 years old and had been abused in her past, so she had to learn to trust once again. Our son's horse arrived when he was just 16 months old and already he had been through 8 homes! The last home complained that he broke out all the time. I'm not surprised. He was by himself and he gets bored VERY easily. He likes to keep busy. If that means figuring out a way to break through a fence to get to the other side (you know, that whole 'grass is greener thing'? lol) then that's what he'll spend his time doing if there's nothing else to keep him busy! Here, he's kept busy by pesting the other horses, and us. He chases the other horses around with the food buckets. Or he likes to tip over our great big water bucket. How? I don't know. It holds gallons and gallons of water and is solid rubber. lol He's no clydsdale!

Anywho, this was to be about Lacy. Lacy's mama, Mina and her adoption 'partner' who arrived in the same load of horses, Nikki (our youngest dd's horse) both needed to learn everything. They were pretty much feral. Nikki is thankfully very friendly and really likes people BUT she has no idea of how to respect their space. Mina on the other hand, needed to learn that people were not something to be afraid of, but instead they could be loving, caring and lots of fun.

With Lacy, we get to teach her this right from the start! She's so small that we can simply push her out of our space when she's not respecting it. If she does a little 'buck', we can let her know that it's not 'acceptable behaviour' (as the Nanny would say)!

But it's not all discipline! We also get to teach her fun stuff! Our daughter has always wanted to be able to sit down with her horse while it lays down. This is NOT something that any of our horses will do. As soon as they see us heading their way, they jump right up! So now, any time she notices that Lacy is laying down in the paddock, she rushes out there if she's not too busy, and sits down with her. She's having SO much fun with this!

When we were considering buying this hobby farm, my husband had been speaking to a friend who had a couple or horses. This woman grew up with horses all of her life. She told my husband he was smart to let his teenage daughter have a horse. She shared that a teen girl who is busy with a horse in her life, often doesn't feel the same need to seek the attention of boys. We're certainly finding that to be true!

Here is Lacy at 2 weeks old, with her mama, Mina.

Mina is shedding her winter coat, and is beginning to look really nice again. She is an AWESOME mama. She is so attentive to her baby and is a great balance between encouraging her baby to explore the world around her, yet keeping her close at all times.

I think if more of us had animals like these, we'd need a LOT less books on parenting!

Lacy is such a cutie!! You're right-there is much us humans could learn from animals about parenting-and other subjects, too.
Guess what-we're buying a new horse. It's a 3 yr old gelding, a quarterhorse palomino. We're going to train him as a family-he's not been under saddle yet.
We're very excited and Hannah will be able to use him in 4-H showing. This year, halter class, next year, pleasure class, hopefully.
Holly