Farewell Arwen!

But do not be sad! This isn't a sad post!

I made the decision to rehome Arwen. She's only 10 minutes away, living with a very lonely black quarter horse. She will get much better attention there than I can give her. Additionally, I was starting to be worried about her behavior around Kaylee.

When you start to see herd dynamics negatively affecting human children, things need to change. I can interfere as much as possible, but the fact is if the animal does not consider a human above them in the herd order, then situations can become dangerous. As big as Gwyn is, she treats my daugher like porcelain and will defer to her and is very careful when they are in the pasture together. Saffron is more apathetic about my daughter. She pretty much ignores her, and that is also safe, in my mind. Arwen would push my daughter around. As a 3 year old human child, she doesn't quite understand the behavior correction that needs to occurr to prevent that. And I can correct it every time I see it but if a correction never comes when I'm not around to see it, then my actions aren't going to have the same effectiveness.

So when I saw someone looking for a companion donkey, I offered Arwen. The family came out to meet them on Saturday and had decided by monday that they wanted her. They brought their mare home a month ago and noticed that the mare was lonely (much like I had noticed with Gwyn). I delivered Arwen last night. She loaded relatively easily with food bribes and hopped off after a short trailer ride to her new home. She met her new buddy and they seemed to hit it off from what I saw.

Saffron was somewhat upset but I'm hoping she'll adjust. There was more concerning behavior between the two that also drove me to this decision.  Saffron has been mounting Arwen as though they were mating. Arwen still tries to nurse. Separation is likely a good thing. Saffron and Gwyn are still together, of course.  And now today things seem to have settled down so I'm feeling better about the whole thing.