Wednesday, December 7, 2016

No Vacation For You!

My horse is an asshole when he is bored.  I can make all the excuses in the world, but that is the bottom line.  He will find the absolute worst possible way to entertain himself.  I know this and yet I keep making the same mistakes over and over.

Case in point, this weekend my favorite dressage judge is in town, so I signed up for three lessons.  I was thinking that because he was going to be working hard this weekend I would keep things light so he would be fresh going into the clinic.

Dis face lies!  It is all trouble

He got last Thursday off then we did a walk trot ride on Friday and a walk trot canter ride Saturday.  He ended up with Sunday off because it rained when I had time to ride and stopped raining when I had to be at work (I was grumpy about that).  Monday we just walked on the hills.  Tuesday morning I was planning on doing an hour of hill work again until I got to the barn.

I got there at 5 since I had an early meeting at work, when I walked in someone had left the radio playing Christmas music and I thought it was kinda cute walking into the dark, quiet barn, with soft Christmas music.  That was until I also heard the sound of water running.

He needs more days like this

My first thought was please please please please don't be my horse.  My wishes were not granted.  He had turned on his freaking water hose.  His entire stall had 1-2 inches of standing water.  At this point I didn't dare look at any of the other stalls.  It had run into the barn isle and down the hall and out the back doors (the barn has a slight downward slope from the front to the back).

I immediately started dreading having to text S and tell her my asshole horse made a giant mess.  Since it was five and I didn't want to wake her up with that text I had to wait.  I waited until 6:30 in hopes that she would have had her coffee but not be at the barn yet.  Thankfully, she was super sweet about it and didn't even blink about the fact that two other stalls had water in them.

And maybe it is just because I do things like this to him and he needs his revenge...

Stinker on the other hand is not getting a light week anymore.  He was excellent for his ride and I managed to let go of my anger at him long enough to ride him.  I am still grumpy at him.  He has toys in his stall, he still had lots of hay in his hay net, and he could have played with his freaking halter that was on the front of his stall.  There were plenty of other things to amuse himself with besides the freaking water spigot.  On the bright side he has another board blocking it now (he tore the previous one down...).

16 comments:

  1. oh dear! On the plus side he's obviously very smart...

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    1. Yes yes he is. If only I could always direct that into positive channels instead of mischief.

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  2. I had a horse like that who would get bored if she wasn't worked enough. Of course, her MO was to hurt *herself*, so I think I'd almost prefer Stinker's method. Actually, I'd just prefer to have a horse who could be bored without destroying anything... haha. Glad S didn't mind too much!

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    1. I would prefer one that would amuse himself with his toys...
      But not maiming himself is a positive.

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  3. Oh my god I couldn't even imagine! Brantley definitely does not handle lack of consistent work well but at least he doesn't get into trouble like that. Love the meme ^.^

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    1. I had been planning on getting a better picture for the hooded one, but it was too fitting for the situation.

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  4. oh my god. no time off for stinkers.

    that's like runkle... he's CRAP with time off. I try not to sour him with too much ringwork but we worked pretty good every day.

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    1. I am so thankful for having so much space for riding. I try to only ride him in the ring 2-3 times a week. Any more than that and both of us end up crazy.

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  5. Eugene and Levi also like to destroy things in their stalls. Levi broke his waterer within like a week of moving in.

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    1. He used to remodel his stall frequently, but he now has multiple mats up to prevent that. Ugh bratty horses...

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  6. This sounds like something Ozzy would do!

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  7. Oh geeze he is really inventive when he's bored eh

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    1. Inventive is one word for it. I had several other choice words for him... :)

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