In Memory of Asti

This blog is focused on my journey with Gunny, so you have not heard much, if anything at all about Asti. Asti is really the horse who started me on my horsemanship journey. She came into my life as a yearling and really had to endure my earliest learning. Asti became lame from hock arthritis at age nine and had to be retired to very light use at that point.

I have a story that I think you will enjoy--this happened last fall. Asti had heaves. One of the treatments that we had been doing for it was for her to wear an “all weather grazer”, which is a mesh net that goes over her nose and helps with her breathing. She wore this about eight hours a day. One morning I put it on and Eric and I were leaving about 30 minutes later, as we drove out the driveway I saw that it was off. I decided to leave it be and just find it later when we got back.

So later that afternoon I was looking for her mask. I walked all over the pasture, which has several different sections to it, and couldn’t find it. Asti was at a hay feeder with a couple of other horses. I decided to check the hay feeder to make sure she hadn’t rubbed it and it fell off in there. So as I checked the hay feeder and walked all around it, I said out loud, “Where did you put it?” I kept on walking—by this time I had probably been looking at least ten minutes—I walked up to their lean-to to look in there. By the time I was walking out of the lean-to, Asti had left the hay feeder and was walking towards me. I was veering to walk back out into the pasture and she veered to meet me and began following me. She does not usually do anything like this.

So because this was different on her part, I started wondering if maybe she was going to help me find her mask. She followed me out to the pasture and we got to a certain point and she stopped (she was still behind me) and looked a different direction. I noticed this and decided to go the direction that she had looked in. In this way she “led me from behind” right to the mask.

So then I picked it up and was going to walk back to go and put it away. It was late in the afternoon and normally I would be taking the mask off shortly. After I had told her thanks for helping me and scratched her a bit, I turned to leave. As I walked away she began to follow me again. So then I said out loud, “if you want this back on, catch up to me.” I walked several more steps and she was still following, so I stopped my feet and she walked right up to me and put her nose by the mask hanging down from my arm. So I put the mask on her and let her wear it for a couple more hours.

This was pretty cool to have Asti basically join in on this conversation and to give her input. This is just one of many stories that I remember fondly and I think about her. She really deserves a lot of credit for where I am today with Gunny.