Horses man. For real, EMOTIONAL TERRORISTS. They know just exactly how to get under your skin and make you blow your lid. And they do it without an ounce of regret and then make you feel like the crazy one. Gaslighters. Every. Last. One of them.
But no, lets be real. We invest a lot in our horses emotionally. We put our blood, sweat + tears into making sure they receive the best care and are in the best health. We agonize over the supplements and the grain and where to board them and their training schedule and the farrier and and and and…….
But I digress. This is about how THEY are the emotional terrorists. So you do all this stuff. Love them from the bottom of your heart and what do they do? They decide to be assholes. They run away in the pasture and take two HOURS to catch when YOU HAD PLANS! Hello! Don’t you know we are going to a show in 2 months? Don’t you know we have WORK to do?
No. They don’t. They don’t care. Because they don’t understand. It is illogical to expect a horse to understand what we do for them. And its illogical for us to take actions like this personally as if they don’t love us anymore and they are giving us the bird.
They aren’t.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, Bacardi and I just went through this whole rigamarole together. For a week, he was tough to catch, taking 20-30 minutes and then a week ago it came to a head where it took us two hours to catch him. It took 4 people with multiple different methods. It was disheartening.
I cried. My horse did not love me anymore. I was going to sell him and get out of horses all together. And then I took a step back. I was being ridiculous. My horse didn’t hate me. He still loved me. He just didn’t want to work. I reevaluated. I gave him a week off. I came out. I gave him cookies. I groomed him, bathed him. But no work. Wednesday I lunged. And yesterday….
….Yesterday we rode for the first time in a week. Nothing crazy. Literally working on shoulder ins at the walk. Walked down to our new jump field. Took a few laps. And we were done. Simple.
I need to take the time and reflect that my horse does not care about my goals. He does not understand why all of a sudden we are ramping up our work load. So I need to figure out how to balance him and his health and need to be a horse and my superficial goals of work.
Hug your ponies and remember they don’t think like us.
Happy Riding! (and catching)
A+B