smellshorsey

That Horse Isn't Loose, He's Just Grazing Part III

This is the third (and I hope final) part of a series about people who let their horses loose and call it "grazing." I call it "Loose Horse!" Click for Part I and Part II.

Sometimes I see things that aren't there when I go to feed the horses in the morning. Like no horses at all (they're behind the barn) or three horses where there ought to be two.

But no, on this particular early Sunday morning there were actually three horses out there. Two inside my fence, one outside. They were having a nice visit. A very exciting visit. How was I going to catch this stray horse -- and whose was it? It was a nondescript dark bay.

So I called to Lily to come help me. She was asleep but she came out quickly, grabbing a handful of carrots from the refrigerator to tempt the stray horse. Note: carrots don't rattle, so they offer no temptation to a stray horse. Use feed in a bucket instead.

Anyway, the mare took flight when she saw us. And we ran after her trail, our horses providing a background of whinnies and thundering hoofbeats. We lost sight of the stray mare, but saw where her hoofprints had torn up several neighbors' neatly tended turf. We followed her trail across our block and across the next street, where I saw a man I'll call Rusty working in his yard. Now, Rusty has two horses. I've seen him ride one of them in twelve years. The stray horse was in his yard, grazing. I called out, "Is that your horse?"

Rusty said, "Yes. She's fine. She's just grazing."

"But she's loose," I said.

"That's fine. I let her out all the time to graze. She doesn't go anywhere," he said.

"She was just at my house," I said.

"Oh. I didn't know she'd do that," he said. "That's never happened before." And then he thanked us for following his horse.

The very next morning I got a phone call from the neighbors behind us who keep elderly QH gentlemen. "I don't know what your new horse looks like, but there's a horse in my yard," she said.

For all I know, it could be mine. Markus is an incredible jumper, and Lucy has jumped one pasture fence before, though not here (she did it with me riding her at another farm, but that's another story). So I went outside and did a head count. Both of my horses were in the pasture. So I got back on the phone and told her to call Rusty, which she did. Of course it was his horse.

So -- surprise -- two days later I hear a stampede. Rusty's two horses are racing around the outside of my pasture while my TBs are racing around the inside. Rusty's paint walking horse is winning, but don't tell the Jockey Club. Rusty's horses are keyed up beyond getting caught, not even with a rattling bucket.

Two doors down some teenage boys continue to play basketball even though there are loose horses flying through their yard. I thought that was kind of funny. The horses must have passed through their yard at least three times. The boys never lose their concentration, they keep on playing. Wow. Wonder if they can do that in math class?

Another neighbor comes out with a golf cart and wants to know if the horses are mine. (I have a dark bay and a chestnut -- there's only one paint in the neighborhood and that's Rusty's. Non-horse people aren't very observant.) No, they're not mine. They belong to Rusty. So Golf Cart #1 goes off to Rusty's house, and then, finding no one at home, goes out searching for the horses. 

Lily and I grab halters and run toward Rusty's house. It's a long way and I'm out of shape. We lose sight of the horses, but since this is daylight and after work people are outside and several different men working in different yards all tell us which way the horses have gone. Each one says a different direction, which only means that the horses have been running around for a while. Each thinks he just saw the horse and we should follow the way he's pointing. So we ignore them and go to Rusty's, hoping the horses have gone home.

Golf Cart #2 drives up with two women in it, one is Rusty's wife, Delilah. I don't know the other but she is the driver and is dressed in pajamas at 6:00 in the afternoon and is wearing socks but no shoes. Delilah looks done in.

"Your horses won't even come when we offer them food," I say.

Delilah answers, "That's because they broke into the feed stall and ate every last bit."

"You'll need to have the vet come pump their stomachs when you catch them," I say. "They could founder."

Delilah doesn't look too interested. So Lily adds, "They could get crippled. They could die."

Delilah says, "Good." (She doesn't really mean this -- she's just had it with the horses.) "I told Rusty we need to get rid of the horses."

We see them gallop by and they head of toward the sunset but this doesn't look like a happy ending. Delilah has given up and is ready to go inside.

I feel like shaking her. "If they get hit by a car, somebody could get killed," I say. She doesn't answer. Her son was completing his senior project when their computer crashed, and she'd been trying to recover his files when somebody called to say her horses were loose. I can tell she feels like this has nothing to do with her. These are her husband's horses.

"Rusty called me and told me to catch them," she says. "I can't catch them."

"If they get hit by a car and someone is killed, you could be sued," I say. "You could lose everything. If you can't catch them, you should at least call the sheriff so they can try to keep people from driving in this area."

She's still not motivated, so Lily and I head for home thinking that maybe they'll come back to see our horses. Golf Cart #1 has given up and gone home, shaking his head. Golf Cart #2 doesn't know what to do. And Delilah has turned into a statue. 

My friend and hay supplier drives by. He sees us carrying halters and leadropes and stops to ask if we need help. "They're not our horses," I say. "Rusty's horses are out."

He looks disgusted. He was going to help if it was us with the problem, but now the picture has changed. "Rusty's horses get out all the time. Rusty feeds them, but that's it. I don't know why they have horses." And he waves and drives off, his noisy diesel nearly drowning out our thoughts.

When we get home there's a neighbor I've never met standing in the road. "Are those your horses?" he asks. "I've already caught them once today but they got away."

I explain that they are Rusty's horses. And while we're talking to him and introducing ourselves, Rusty's horses -- the paint walking horse and the retired trotter mare -- come flying by. They are unfit, foaming, wringing wet and heaving to breath. But they're not ready to stop. We try to outsmart them, to pen them, to corner them. The area is too big with too many obstacles. Finally, the trotter mare flies by Lily and Lily manages to snag her halter. It scares me to watch from way across the field, a strange horse going too fast and too close to my daughter. But Lily has done it. And with help from the neighbor, she's able to put a halter and lead rope on the paint, who, by the way, is named "Monster." And is actually pretty cute.

Monster and her friend are jazzed up so we walk them back to Rusty's with difficulty. Lily is wearing Rainbows (translation: expensive leather flip flops that advertise her mother's extravagant and foolish love for her), bad shoes for working with strange and agitated horses. But she comes through it all with ten toes.

"Mom, these horses are about to drop," she says. "They need to be hosed off and walked."

"And to have their stomachs pumped," I say. We know none of this is going to happen. Delilah is mad at her husband and worried about her son's senior project.

"What should we do?" she asks. I don't really know. We're supposed to be at a dinner party in town in 45 minutes. We're not dressed and it's a long drive. In fact, we are sweaty and covered with horse sweat. But that wasn't the question. The question was about the horses, and I didn't know what to do.

Delilah is the one who needs to call the vet. Or call Rusty and get him to call the vet. Or do something. Delilah calls Rusty on her cell phone. Then she tells us, "If you don't mind, could you tie them up to the fence posts?"

Wringing wet, blowing, foamy and full of grain. I might be slack, but Lily is a good Pony Clubber and she says, "We can't do that. They're too hot. They need to be hosed off and cooled out."

Delilah looks like she's just been told to push a rock up a hill for eternity. "How do you know that?" she asks.

"That's what you know when you have horses," Lily says. Ouch. But she's right. And Delilah never claimed to know anything other than that she didn't want horses or to be out here with us.

"We'll hose them off," Lily volunteers. Delilah gets the hose for us. I'm worried about Lily's toes in her Rainbows. We hose off both horses but they're still too hot, still blowing.

"Now they need to be walked until they're cool," Lily says. We walk them for a little while, Delilah walking beside us. She's obviously not the fittest person and carries a lot of extra weight. A lot. This escapade has been difficult for her physically. It has possibly also done her some good, as would walking the horses but I didn't just say that.

The mare I'm walking has quit blowing, but Monster has not. I can't keep walking her. We need to go. And here's that fine line you don't know which side to dance on -- you know what needs to be done, you've told the responsible person what needs to be done. If they don't do it, then what do you do?

This isn't abuse. That would be different. This is more bad choices and ignorance. I say again I think she should call the vet, and she says there probably wasn't that much food in the grain bin. Lily says that Monster needs to be walked. Monster's continued blowing says she needs to be walked.

Delilah appreciates all of this, she really does. For some reason, maybe her fitness, maybe who knows what else is going on in her life, she just doesn't have it in her. She keeps marvelling that Lily knows how to do all these things (basic horse ownership stuff like how to tie them and how to hose them and how to check their general condition), and Lily tries to answer somewhat delicatedly that these are the things you know if you own a horse.

I say we need to go. Lily says that Monster can't be left like this, that Monster needs to be walked. She looks at Delilah. Delilah says, "Okay, I'll walk her. At least until you can't see me anymore." And we all laugh. Sort of.

The neighbor driving Golf Cart #2 -- the one wearing her pajamas and socks -- offers to drive us home. We accept. She drives us through her yard, where we meet her husband and get to see his bonsai collection. It is huge and beautiful. We have a nice chat. I'd like to see her again and am glad Monster introduced us. She tells us that she puts on her pjs as soon as she gets home from work, and when she saw the horses loose she jumped in her golf cart without thinking. I like that in a person. She takes us home.

When Lily and I get inside our house, there's a voicemail from a neighbor from down our street. "Your horses are out. That big brown and white one was in our yard." This neighbor is very particular about her lawn and flowers. I know she was not happy to have her turf churned up by galloping hooves.

I just wish she was particular enough to notice that I have no flashy colored brown-and-white horse in my pasture. Wasn't me. Our horses are solid colors, and they graze inside the fence.

Getting Stuck

 I haven't been posting because I've been stuck. No, not like the horse in this picture, though this is exactly how I feel. (Photo from here.)

Let me first explain what "stuck" is. It's not getting your head stuck in a chair, no matter how coy and attention getting that might be.

Stuck is much less dramatic and possibly even less useful. A local riding school has some very reliable school horses. They can be relied upon to do what you ask, or perhaps not. But they won't do anything stupid or dangerous.

Sometimes, for no apparent reason, they get stuck. Maybe they will have been standing in a group while their riders jump individually, or while their riders were getting instruction on what to do next. At any rate, when the group of horses moves off, one (or more) might decide not to. Their riders will flail away with their legs banging the horses' sides in an effort to move the horse forward, but the school horse (or horses) don't budge. They are stuck.

You've seen it. You may have experienced it. The horse is stuck, all four feet planted on the ground. It's not going anywhere. It is stuck.

The instructor has to intervene. She pulls them forward. They come unstuck and it's like it never happened. "Sometimes they just get stuck," she tells the rider.

I've got something that I just have to write and don't want to. It's not hard, but there's a lot of it. I've done all the pre-work, the research and interviews. And try as I might, I can't make myself move forward. I am as stuck as one of those school horses, and there is no one but me to get me unstuck. I'm not doing a good job of urging me forward, but I am doing a good job of at least limiting fun distractions, like blogging.

I came a little unstuck this morning, since the deadline was last week (oops!). I'm a third of the way through. So long as I don't get stuck again (this is not writer's block -- this is an inner protest) I should be finished by Wednesday.

And that will unstick the rest of my life.

I need to post about riding horses in the ocean in the Bahamas last month. I need to blog about the Pony Club Quiz Rally, and especially tell you about the shoe table. But for now, I just need to stay unstuck. Be back soon.

The Trailer Was Shaking

Oh, to know how a horse's little mind works. I feel bad about this story.

We had Buddy all loaded in the trailer and were driving down our street on the way to Lily's weekly riding lesson at a farm 15 minutes away (in the South distance is measured in time, not miles) when I saw our silly dog, Parker, in my rear view window. His Invisible Fence collar must need a new battery because he had left the yard and was following us down the road. He's so sweet and so dumb.

So I stopped (no need to pull over on our street) and Lily got out to take Parker back home. I stayed in the Yukon. Suddenly, the Yukon started shaking. There was no banging or weight-shifting from the trailer, so I didn't see how the shaking was Buddy. He wasn't moving around or making noise. But there was something going on back there. I would almost swear the trailer was trembling. I got out to check.

Poor Buddy! He WAS trembling -- shaking all over. He glanced back at me and the whites of his eyes were showing. I petted his rump and spoke reassuringly. What was the deal? We had just stopped in the road. Then he started whinnying for Lucy. A panicked whinny. And he was still trembling.

The whole trailer was shaking. No banging. Just shaking. Lily got back and I said, "Look at your horse. He's trembling all over." It was a terrible sight.

"Is he colicking?" she asked.

"He just pooped before getting in the trailer, so I don't think so," I said. "Let's get moving and see if he'll stop," I said, figuring that if he wasn't okay (and what could suddenly be so wrong? He was fine when being groomed and loaded. He was better than fine) we could come right back.

We got back in the truck and started again. I went back over in my mind what had happened. Then it dawned on me. You probably could have seen the light bulb appear above my head. Lily had yelled at Parker, the dog, for following us. When the dog knew he was in trouble (he's very submissive), he started running back home. Lily yelled at him to stay home and not to get in the road again. She followed him all the way to his dog bed on the porch and told him to stay there.

Lily must have started yelling at the dog as soon as she got out of the truck. Buddy thought he was the one in trouble!

We do not beat our horses, though we do not always speak in a polite, quiet tone. Especially when Lucy tries to push her way into Buddy's stall because he gets more food than she does.

Poor Buddy. He didn't know what he had done. He didn't know Lily wasn't yelling at him. He had no where to go to get away, standing in the trailer like the good boy he is. So he just started trembling.

I've never seen him tremble before.

When we got where we were going Buddy was eating hay and all fine. Still, before we unloaded Lily got in the trailer with Buddy for some sweet talk, treats and much scratching of his favorite places so that he would forgive her (he already had) and wouldn't think the trailer was a place where you had a reason to tremble.

Poor, sweet Buddy.

When the lesson was over he hopped right back in. Whew!

Buddy's great. He doesn't walk into the trailer and he doesn't charge in. He hops with a controlled enthusiasm. I'd hate for that to ever change.

Hot Air Balloons and Horses

They're having a hot air balloon and equestrian festival in Aiken, S.C. What will be next? Plastic grocery bags and horses festival?

My horses would think that hot air balloons were Giant Breathing Plastic Grocery Bags of Death. We would find out just exactly how fast and how far our horses could go. We'd no doubt beat the balloons to their destination.

And they've got fireworks, too! Yahoo!

Look at a portion of the schedule, below. Can you imagine warming up for dressage while the balloons are taking off?

Festivities begin on Friday September 19th with barrel racing at 4:00 PM, jumping exhibition at 5:00 PM, Kids Balloon run at 6:00 PM, Special Shape balloons and tether balloon rides at 7:00 PM, Fireworks display at 8:00 PM.

On Saturday September 20th the balloons will take off at 6:30 AM, dressage exhibition at 7:30 AM, hunting exhibition at 9:00 AM.

But I just might go watch the goings on. Perverse, I know. Beyond the disconnect between horse behavior and hot air balloons, it sounds like fun. Here's the link.

The Proposition

This photo was taken in 2006 when Lily borrowed a school pony, Tudor, to ride in an event because Buddy kept bucking her off. Tudor was great and they had a wonderful ride and a great time. Too bad their dressage circles were, um, not very circular. Tudor was a good boy and did much to build her confidence. Since Buddy was doing a lot of bucking, I regretted that I hadn't found Tudor before the riding school did. I was one week too late.

If I had found this horse before we got Buddy, I would have bought him. He's a cute little QH-type kid's horse who's just perfect. He is fun and willing, and the riding school bought him a week before I called the man who was offering him for sale. Tudor was the one who got away.

Buddy is fancier and bigger. And Buddy is absolutely wonderful (now), though he will still buck. But I still have a soft spot for Tudor. I've tried to figure out ways to get him. And now he's available.

Here's the problem -- and the proposition. A while back Tudor went to summer camp and discovered that if he bucked, the little kids fell off and he was rid of that problem. So they put more little kids on him, and he bucked them off, too. So they put big kids on him. Guess what. Splat! Yes, indeed, he learned to buck the big kids off, the experienced kids, you get the picture. So the head of the riding school worked with him and restored him to respectability. An older, more experienced student then leased him and absolutely loves him.

But he's bucked her off twice. The second time, she broke her ankle. So now he needs a new home, though she still comes out to pet him, groom him, love him and wants to start leasing him again. The riding school owner is over Tudor and looking to find him a new career, new owner, new whatever.

The riding school owner, knowing how much we like Tudor, called with a proposition. We can have Tudor and work past this little difficulty. Lily is older now and very much experienced with a horse that bucks. When Tudor is back to the sweet self we all remember and love, we can sell him and get whatever we can for him, minus a small sum to go back to the riding school owner. Actually, it's not all that small of a sum. If we can't sell him, she'll take him back.

Paul immediately said, "no" because he is a wise man who knows that horses like to eat. Lily immediately said, "yes" because she's been looking for an opportunity like this.  I immediately said, "Hmmm."

There are lots of reasons why this might be a great idea. We like the horse. It would feel good to rehabilitate him and help him go to a suitable home.  Lily is trying to save money for a fancy warmblood (Buddy is half QH -- doesn't that make him a warmblood?). I like a project. I like Tudor. I like the riding school owner.

I called Jane today to run it past her. Jane doesn't have a crystal ball, but she does have a better sense of, well, better sense.

There are a lot of reasons that it might work. But between the depressed price of horses, the danger of bodily harm to Lily and the unlikelihood of us being able to make a permanent change in his behavior, I don't think I'll be able to say yes.

I'm sure Lily could ride him and get him where he didn't buck her off. But I'm not sure that he wouldn't buck off the next person. We don't need him, couldn't keep him, would have to sell him. I'm not sure we could find the right buyer.

And we're already very fond of this little horse. This might just be heartbreak on a stick.

Shut Down by Lightning

Lightning will strike twice and I'm here to prove it. I haven't been posting or visiting lately because I haven't had Internet access. The first time it struck and knocked out my modem. We have cable Internet, so I had to wait for the repair guy to come out this way. That took a few days. The modem was partially damaged but he connected me a different way and I was back online.

Then, on July Fourth, God put on a tremendous fireworks show with a great blessing of rain and enough lightning to power the U.S. if only we could capture and control that energy. This time the lightning struck us more than once and knocked out our telephone, Internet and cable TV. It took days and days to get a repair, and it's not quite right yet (so I get to wait for the repairman all day Friday). It fried the cable connections down by the street as well as the one leading into our house. We heard it when it hit. Yee ha! That'll get your attention.

But I'm back. And as I type this, I see another storm coming. Our Thunder Hound, who is afraid of lightning, has already stood on his hind legs to look in the window to tell us, "Let me in!" And he's in, probably trembling by my daughter's feet downstairs.

The grass is green and life feels good. One of my hay suppliers has already had a first cutting (which he saves for cows). Soon, surely I'll be getting 2008 hay. When it rains every day the grass grows -- but the farmers can't cut. As long as the grass is growing I'll sit here happy.

And my tadpoles are getting really big. No legs yet. They look like little black shiny whales.

So I'm back -- for now.

Why Horses Eat Tree Bark

See this tree? It used to have bark. Now it has horse teeth marks. Not content with being horses, Buddy and Lucy want to be beavers. I don't know what kind of tree this is but it's one I like. I need to paint it with Tabasco or something. They're also beginning to work on the pecan trees, which may bring out the horse muzzles. Sweet gums they can have because the gum balls get in their feet. But pecans are another matter.

If you ask around you'll find a lot of reasons given for why horses eat tree bark. Some experts say it's a lack of copper or other nutrients. Other experts say it's to make up for fiber in cold season grasses.

Buddy and Lucy have not one but two mineral supplement blocks. They eat a bale of Coastal Bermuda hay a day. They get a pelleted feed that's supposed to be full of yummy stuff. There is some green in the pasture. I agree with the experts who say it's because they like the taste. But maybe there's a grander scheme.

You didn't think horses were long-term thinkers and planners, did you? Neither did I. But this bark-eating thing has been going on a while, and I'm seeing a plan.

First they ate all the bark they could reach off of our sweet gum trees. Go figure. If the tree is actually sweet that's a no-brainer. So we had a big die-off of the sweet gums in our pasture because the horses cleaned all the bark off of the trees. In other posts on this blog you'll see photos with stumps in the background. Those were the sweet gums. We had to cut them all down before they blew down and hit the barn. We made some of them into jumps.

But we missed one. And in the high winds over the weekend, the top sheared off and broke through the fence. We didn't see it at first because it's in the wooded back of the pasture where we seldom go. But Lily and some friends were out exploring and discovered the gum tree crashed through the fence. It's hard to make out what's what in the following photo. Paul put a board across the top as a temporary fix. You can see the tree squashing down the wire portion of the fence, and the dead horse-eaten trunk standing in the foreground.

Notice also that they have already started eating the upper branches that are now within reach.

Tell me. Is it because the trees are tasty, or because once eaten through, they'll be able to go visit the neighbor's horses and eat their grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side-of-the-fence?

The Fences Always Need Mending

Give a horse a fence and he'll gnaw a hole through it (I'm not even talking about cribbers). Or, if his behind itches, he'll use it to scratch. Eventually, the horse will win and the fence will need fixing.

We used to keep a hot wire around the perimeter of our pasture, but lightning keeps zapping the charger.

Bless Lily's heart, she tried to fix this piece of the fence. Looks like Christmas decorations gone awry. Click to enlarge.
  Here's the fence crew at work in our sunny, 74-degree January weather.

I'm Pretending that Lucy's Not Lame

Paul and Lily fixed the hot wire that "encourages" the horses to stay out of the hay garage. (For some reason, I posted about their exploits here.)

Nobody colicked.  I keep the hay off of the ground with a "floor" of plywood boards and wood pallets on top of bricks. Somebody with their great horse-weight crashed through in several places during their Hay Feast the other night, and Lucy is lame. Lucy is never lame.

I can't find any heat or cuts. I assume when your Big Pig Self crashes through a floor not meant to hold  horses, something could twist or turn. For my peace of mind, I'm going to pretend that she's not lame. If she's not better in a week or so, I'll call the vet.

Mantra: Lucy is sound, Lucy is sound, Lucy is sound.

This is because my New Year's resolution is to ride her three times a week. It's too cold for me to ride (Lily is riding at this moment -- I'm inside with my coat on) so It's Too Cold to Ride and Lucy is Sound.

My niece is my horse vet and she's wonderful. She moved to another part of the state a month ago, a wonderful opportunity for her at a big lay-up barn they're building to catch the North-South traffic on I-95. It will also have a surgery and a team of several vets. I started missing her before she packed the first box.

If she were here, all I'd have to do is call her and she'd stop by. We'd have a nice visit. She'd run her hands up and down Lucy's legs and tell me there was nothing she was worried about.

So I'm not going to worry either. At least not today.

I don't want to think about all the things it could be. A vet once told me to throw away my veterinary encyclopedia because it wasn't helping me. I thought he was being funny, but I think he might be right. I need to let go of the things I can't help.

I had to reschedule the appointment for hospice about my mother next week because it conflicted with an orthodontist appointment for Lily.

I'm grateful Lucy and Buddy didn't colic. I wish Lucy wasn't doing a good impersonation of a lame horse. I just can't carry it all, though.

Lucy is sound until proven otherwise. Later. Later. Always later.

Bad Horse Mom

I planned to go trail riding on Lucy with another horse mom while Lily had a lesson on Buddy at the farm where she and Buddy go every week. Both horses got in the trailer just fine, which always surprises me with Lucy because she used to have strong objections to getting in the trailer. Maybe that is over. I don't know.

Lucy was fine when we got to the other farm. Buddy, who goes there every week and acts as calm as an old dog arriving home when we get there, is suddenly not That Buddy anymore. He is Wild Protective Stallion Buddy-Man (he's gelded) with his red-headed, highly desirable mare (Lucy). He can't stop whinnying. Lucy is looking around and blows him off. We saddle up and ride to the where Lily will have her lesson on the bellowing and agitated Buddy and I will meet the other horse mom for our trail ride.

I figure that Lily's instructor will be able to handle Buddy's whinnying and concern about Lucy leaving, so I ride off. Buddy's badness has a limit. He'll do little things and dance around and pretend to rear and want to buck, but he's just into drama. Lily can handle it, especially if she gets mad. She can certainly handle it with the instructor supervising her actions.

Lucy is looking at things and a little dance-y, but she settles quickly as long as we are moving forward. She's not even that concerned about being that close to the other mounted horse mom. I can hear Buddy and hate that I've done this to Lily's lesson, but if this is a problem, there's no better place to work it out than right here with a trusted teacher. And Lucy needs the mileage.

So we head off for the trails. Until....

A very dear, sweet friend barrels up in her Suburban to tell me that Lily is having a terrible time and that Buddy is upset. It's clear that if she were me, she'd rush back. I value her judgment and her opinion of me. I also think that Lily, with the teacher right there and Lucy disappearing into the sunset (figuratively), is fine by now. I don't even hear him, and I'm within hearing distance. But I don't want to be a Bad Mom, in case I'm wrong about absolutely everything (and this wouldn't be the first time.)

So I go back, only to interrupt their lesson and get Buddy whinnying again. "He's fine," said the teacher. "He's only bad when you leave. Or come back."

So, do I leave again? Do I ride back out to the trails?

This is like dropping a child off at daycare twice. Make them go through the separation again. So I just rode around the outside of the lesson area and worked on Lucy.

In retrospect, I wish I had left for the trail. If they were fine, it would be a good thing to work on Buddy's separation-from-Lucy issues. But that wasn't the lesson plan for that day.

And I so didn't want to be a Bad Horse Mom.