BUCKY UPDATE!
First off, I’ve got to say that I have gotten really attached to the little bugger. He is sweet and gentle and quiet and just the funniest looking little guy…I’ll post some pictures as soon as my camera battery recharges. He has been shedding copious amounts of hair for several weeks now, and isn’t even CLOSE to being done. The other day I glanced at him and it looked as if he was rubbing all the hair off of his shoulders, and then I realized that what I was seeing was not patches of skin, it was patches of short, dark HAIR — his summer coat! He is going to look like a completely different horse when he is done shedding. He lets me stand next to him and pull out handfuls of hair, and big rastafarian-looking matts…and he is just so calm and patient about the whole thing. With the heat we are having these past 2 days, he must be so uncomfortable in all that hair, so he seems to appreciate my attempts to help.
He had his feet trimmed a few weeks ago, and was good as gold for the farrier. He made my other 2 horses look like rank amatuers, in fact.
He shares quarters with Oliver, and I turn the three of them out in the pasture together. The big horses push him around a bit (especially Jay..his idea of fun is to chase his friends and attempt to bite them in the butt) but Bucky stands up to them pretty well. He can throw a pretty good double-barrel kick for an old guy. But once in a while, I catch them all standing quietly together, Bucky with his head next to Oliver’s flanks like he’s being protected. It is so cute. No real problems at meal times if I be sure there is a separate pile of hay for everyone. If one of the big horses drives him off his pile, he just moves over to a different one, easy as can be. He really gets on well with other horses, even a couple of goofballs like my two boys. Bucky isn’t as active as they are, but he will sometimes join them in a romping session, and trot or canter around just for fun.
I rode him briefly one day…put Jay’s dressage saddle on him, and tried to use’s Jay bridle as well, but that was way too big, so I just rode him in a halter. He didn’t want to do anything but sort of frantically trot from one fence to the other, clip clop clip clop…I felt like the world’s biggest kid on his back. I could not get him to walk at all, just trot and canter. He had a lot of energy, but he didn’t really seem all that happy about the situation, so we didn’t do it for very long. It was pretty fun though. And keep in mind, I’m a big gal, so I may have been too heavy for him.
Anyway, I am really enjoying Bucky, and I hope that he is happy here as well. Last night I walked out to the barn and kinda surprised everyone (they were all snoozing out behind the barn) and Bucky nickered at me. That was cool. 
pictures to follow…you’ll have to see the terrible hack job that I did to his forelock with a pair of dull scissors…good thing horses don’t have mirrors. 
He is too cute!
