Aren't I a ray of sunshine?
Anyway, yesterday... I hadn't seen Tico and Dusty since last weekend, when we'd had one of the few really cold days. I'd left them in their heavy winter blankets, so on Tuesday, it having started getting into the upper 30s and 40s again, I'd called to ask that they be switched back to their sheets. Unfortunately, that message only made it as far as Tico - poor Dusty was in his winter jammies still when I got there, so I pulled the blanket off him immediately and left him naked.
Both of them have pretty good coats - Dusty's being particularly unique: he'd been clipped in the early winter because it had simply grown too long and too early for his comfort. Now a considerable amount of it has grown back. Nearly white. He's a palomino, and the girl who clipped him for me had been practicing before doing her own horse. She gave him an eventer clip, which looked really precious on a 28 year old quarter horse. With the clipped hair grown out now, he looks particularly odd.
Though yesterday was pretty fine, Tico seemed a bit wired. He was giving me the horsie silly eyeballs while on the crossties as I did a quick sheath cleaning (what can I say - he's a pig and there was gross black junk stuck to the inside of his legs), brushed him, saddled him, and was preparing to put his bridle on. My friend Elaine was working at the barn yesterday, and she was doing the afternoon turn-out changing of the guard. She opened LC's stall door, and Tico decided that was the most frightening thing EVAH, pulled back hard nearly sitting on his butt, broke his halter, and ran out the back door.
I grabbed the broken halter (I have no idea why) and my lead line, and followed in time to see the tail-in-the-air horse equivalent of the one finger salute being waved jauntily my way. He started running down the track between the turnouts, finally stopping about half way down. I muttered under my breath "you better not roll in the mud with that saddle on, buster..." but he was more interested in trying to eat the dead grass, thank goodness. I wrapped the leadline around his neck, turned him around, and threw him in his stall where he got to enjoy the after-ride carrots I'd placed in his feed bucket, the twit.
I finished tacking him up in his stall and we headed into the indoor for a little bit, so I could get on (mounting blocks RULE) then out the door and down the track between the turnouts again. Lately I've been riding him in what Dover Saddlery calls a "Hackamore Noseband":
You attach it to a regular headstall, and when adjusted correctly it rests on the bone (not the cartilage) of the nose and applies pressure there. It isn't and shouldn't be necessary to strong-arm a horse with that, and Tico is pretty well-behaved in it. I like it in the winter particularly, because cold bits make for unhappy horses, and he seems to like it, too.
The wind was howling down in the back ring. For some reason, it's always much windier down there than up at the barn about 100 yards away. I don't know what the crows were up to, but the murder sounded like they were murdering each other in the field beside the ring.
To make things even more akin to Armageddon as far as the tiny brained equine was concerned, some people were walking dogs out in the field behind the ring, continuing on to the graveyard. We could glimpse them through the trees, but not really see full bodies.
I asked them, quite nicely, if they would please say something so my horse wouldn't think they were demons from hell come to eat the poor little booger. Nothing. I asked again, more loudly. Not a word - except they appeared to try to go further into the woods. Which didn't fool Tico, not one bit - he now knew they were planning an attack. Jerks.
It made for a lively ride. There were a couple of nasty little spooks which seemed more crow-related than demons in the graveyard related, but other than that he behaved pretty nicely, and we had good lively trots and easy controlled canters. I was actually pleased with the little twit by the end of the ride.
Last night, just before falling to sleep, my mind pulled back the memory of one of the spooks, and my body jerked in a larger reaction than I'd had while it occurred. Isn't it odd the way the mind works?
