>>> If we come back to the barn with a load of hay and the horses are >>> nearby, I have to lock them in the stalls. We only have two, the mare >>> willingly goes into hers, but when I want to put the two boys in their >>> 12 X 12 stall they get a bit antsy. They get better every time knowing >>> it's just for a short time. Falki now goes in at meal time after a few >>> initial training sessions. I gave that stall to Gloi after Calvin left, >>> but as soon as he saw his old corner feeder set back up outside the >>> stall, he wanted that spot so Falki moved his meals to inside the stall. >>> They are funny critters.
Falki seemed to have no past "baggage" when he came to live here - he was still kind of green, but all of his prior training seemed positive so we just built on it. That said, for whatever reason he was probably as claustrophobic about being in a stall when we got him as any horse I've had. A good many of my Icelandic's apparently hadn't spent much time in a stall when we got them. Falki never did anything dangerous or silly (unlike Eitill who jumped out a few times - not out of fear or panic, but when he decided it was time to go out...) but he obviously didn't care for the stall. I guess maybe horses have their individual quirks like humans. Anyway, just a word of advice for anyone who may get the luxury of building their own barn from scratch. Cary dragged his feet about building our barn, but once he agreed to do it, he encouraged me to have the stalls built as I saw fit. I went for a very light, open barn. I have bars all around each stall, with sliding doors into the hallway, and a double-Dutch door to the outside of each stall. I don't have a loft and I had several ridged translucent "skylights" put in the roof. There's a run-in shed on one side of the barn so that three stalls open directly into the pasture. On the other side, the three stalls each have a private paddock - we added those paddocks as an afterthought. Anyway, I "eased" Falki into staying in stalls by letting him and his buddy Skjoni into one of the stalls with private paddocks attached so that they could at least step outside for fresh air. I don't know that we ever kept him up in a stall overnight - I don't think so. But, anyway, we did get him to the point where he was pretty relaxed - first in the big "outside" stalls, then even in the "normal" 12 x12 stalls. I've seen some stalls built with low ceilings (lofts overhead), no windows, and no view of the stalls beside them, and maybe with very little view to the hallway. I'm so glad I went ahead and put in all the anti-claustrophobic features that I did. I rarely stall my horses overnight, but when one is sick or lame, it's so nice to have options about how much space they can have and I think they are happier with a good view of the world. It's much harder (and more expensive) to retrofit an older barn, but it's not THAT much more to build a barn with at least some of these features from the beginning. No, wait - Falki DID stall in a stall overnight for two nights when I took he and Trausti to the first Liz Graves clinic. However, those stalls were HUGE - maybe 16 x16 and I'd rented two. When I saw how huge they were I let Falki and Trausti stay in one stall together and they seemed fine, not nervous by that time. I turned them out in the ring for short periods when we had breaks from the clinic, and he was the bit and conformation model so he was out a lot, getting attention from his doting public. :) There were other horses in the barn, in the stalls behind them and across the aisle from them. That barn was a recently converted cow-barn, and it had a very light, open construction too. Karen Thomas, NC
