Scared Horse

I had an iinteresting night at the barn tonight. I went over a little early as I went to the grain store, and much to Louie's approval, did buy more hay stretcher. I had considered not feeding it anymore as they don't really need it but they really love it so........... Anyway, I just took my time filling buckets and such then brought everyone in at 4:00. Their bucket out in the pasture was empty tonight and Louie was very thirsty when he came in. Their bucket was not tipped over but it's very possible they did tipped it over and then playing around with it got it upright again. So, I don't know but they also might need more water put out during the day since they are munching hay all day now having the round bale. We'll just have to monitor this to see.


I decide to ride Louie tonight so after they ate, I put Louie on the cross ties, bush and saddle him up and just about the time I'm ready to take him into the arena Bart come over and asks me if I would mind waiting for a while to ride Louie. The woman who's horse is terrified of the mules is just getting ready to ride and the horse was already upset and hadn't even seen a mule yet. So, I switch plans and decided to ride Marie first, then when the other woman was done, I'd ride Louie. Well, I might just as well have brought Louie into the arena as that horse NEVER calmed down one bit. For about 30 minutes the woman stood holding her horses reins while he spun, danced, jumped around, kicked, snorted and blew. She never even came close to getting on him. There was one other woman riding and her horse kind of fed off that and he bolted out of control once and made a few circuits around the arena about 100mph. Geesh! The rider stayed very calm and quickly had her horse under control.  And I have to say that even though I had Marie out, neither mule was calling for her (much to my surprise) so they were NOT adding to the problems. Marie was fine and I, at least, had a nice ride. Finally the woman with the scared horse gave up as he started just dragging her around the arena and she put him away.

I then put Marie away and was getting ready to get Louie back out when my husband calls me. Fred, "Hey, aren't we supposed to go to your mothers house tonight?". Me, "No, that's Friday night." Silence on the other end. Me, with horror, "Oh, it IS Friday night isn't is......". DUH! So, rush home, clean up and head to moms as we were opening gifts with the family with mom tonight as she was so sick on Christmas.