How Grooming Horses is Different From Grooming Little Girls

I hate to confess this story. This is a Bad Mom story, and I am the Bad Mom.

If you've spent your whole life grooming horses, you sometimes react without thinking when they aren't cooperative. For instance, if they start to paw or fidget, I correct them. Usually with a swift whack to the nearest body part, excepting face. (Whack is harder if behavior is dangerous.) They are bigger but I need to be sure they don't figure that out.

So, one day when Lily was smaller I was brushing her hair. She was standing on her little step stool so she could see in the mirror. I don't know what I was thinking about, but I was certainly in automatic horse-grooming mode. I was brushing. She was standing. All was well. Then she stepped off of the step stool.

Whack! I hit her with the brush.

She was stunned. I was more stunned. The only time I ever spanked her was when she begged to be put in time out instead of going to bed (which meant time out was not working). This brush-whacking thing was clearly out of whack.

"Mom, why did you do that?" she cried.

I felt just awful. "I'm so sorry, darling. I forgot you weren't a horse."

She laughs about that now. Thank goodness.

Comments

[ELL]

That's very funny. I love the way you left the paragraph: "then she stepped off the step stool." I was laughing so hard. I read it to Dan he laughed too.

[kathyc]

Very very cute. Poor dear, she didn't know what was coming.

[Donna]

Thanks for your insightful comment the other day. I sometimes forget that my dogs aren't horses!

[transylvanianhorseman]

I'm glad that she laughs at it now. You must have felt so embarassed.

Worst "bad horse mom" I ever saw was in a very different league. One place I kept a horse had a really delinquent stablehand, who brought a 2yo child to work. Usually said child was put in a loose box. Occasionally with a horse still in it. One day however mom was badder than usual, and made an electric fence pen for the child because it was "naughty". The yard owner did nothing because she belonged to a strange sect where everything was "God's will" and bad things happened only to the "sinful" which was of course their own fault.

I used to wonder why social services didn't come after that child.

[Lori]

it really is an uplifting story.
pleez don't ask the other N about when I nipped her ear with mr. scissors

[I Gallop On]

That is simply delightful. You will have me grinning most of the afternoon.