Cold Mash & Cold Pizza

After a nice afternoon hanging out with Whisper thinking about all the wonderful lengths of training we were through and how close we were now...

it was time to go for a ride in my newly gated arena. I left Ben in his stall and Whisper and I walked off down the hill alone. No problems until we were within feet of the arena, Ben began screaming from the barn and kicking the stall walls. This created a monster at the end of my reins.

Whisper flew backwards popping rears each time she got her feet under her enough. By the third rear she had enough stability and speed to yank the reins out of my hands. As she came down I saw in horror that a front leg stepped perfectly through the loop in the now loose reins.

She took off until she felt the pull on the bit her leg was creating. I was afraid I was about to watch my horse snap her own leg. She fought the leg, did a short jack rabbit bucking session, then I was caught up to her and she just kept running backwards facing me.

What felt like 5 minutes later, between my horror watching her and Ben's screams calling to her, she stopped and I got to her to unbuckle the reins and free her from her own leg. She looked resigned to what happened and we walked slowly back up to the barn to let Ben out to be with us while I walked her a little while.

I guess with 2 horses it's pretty much impossible to avoid a herd bound situation. Ben is attached to her so severely that I can't let the kids do anything with him right now either. One afternoon, he tossed me in efforts to get back to her and I just can't risk him hurting a kid.

Later that night, the "Frankenstorm" of 2012 making headlines everywhere was treating us with strong wind gusts, black clouds, and freezing temps. I brought hot water out to the barn to make a mash for the horses. After mulling over how Whisper handled that afternoon, I decided it would be a good idea to start haltering the horses and walking them in instead of letting them just run in the barn from the pasture.

Maybe it would give me a little more importance in their lives and help the herd include me more.

Ben walked right up to be haltered, blanketed, and dove into his warm mash. Whisper took one look at me with her halter and took off. For 55 minutes I tried to catch her, in terrible gusting winds way past the kind of darkness you get when the sun is gone and the sky is completely full of black cloud cover, past the ability to feel my own hands, she ran full speed away from me. What the heck?!?! That mare...  I called her a lot of names tonight as her tail went spinning away from me over and over again.

Her warm mash was long cold by the time she allowed me to approach and halter her, as was my dinner. I glanced at my phone alerts to see a lot of my friends had loved the picture of Whisper laying down next to me today and how sweet it was that we were that close. Horses. Ugh.

"It's easiest to eat crow warm, the colder it gets the harder it is to swallow"