smellshorsey

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.

Who's smarter? Horses or mules?

I don't know who is smarter, horses or mules, so when I ask the question, it's not that I have the answer. I don't know anything about mules and am a little mystified by the current fad where lots of horse people are switching to mules. The hooves alone can't be the reason.... I'm in the watching and wondering phase.

But I have a story. One of my horse vets has horses and mules (and can't explain why, but that's beside the point). She had a young mule and a young horse that she was trying to teach to load in the trailer. Every night she would tie them to the trailer and they would eat out of buckets on the trailer floor. They would have to reach in through the trailer doors to eat, and every day she would put the buckets farther into the trailer.

The day that the buckets were no longer in reach, the young horse had no problem hopping into the trailer to eat, which was the plan.

But the mule had to think about this. And this is the truth about what happened. The mule was not interested in being so foolishly manipulated as the young horse had been. But he figured out a way around it. He reached down, grabbed the rubber floor mat with his teeth, and PULLED! The mat slid toward him, and with it, the food bucket. The mule ate his supper without having to go through the indignity of getting in the trailer.

Don't know how she ever taught him to load.

Lucy is smart, and a smart horse is not necessarily a good thing. What about intelligence in mules?

Or are they all smart and much smarter than us? We're the ones who have to work to feed them, clean out their stalls and keep them from suicide in a fence....

A Thoroughbred's education

Lucy had a normal upbringing for a racehorse-to-be. Kentucky born and bred, sold at Keeneland, and then she got to have kind of a Paris Hilton lifestyle of spending the summers in Kentucky eating bluegrass and spending the winters in South Carolina eating Coastal. Or whatever they were growing at the training barn. She has fancy and successful parents (her sire was the top racehorse in England one year), and her owner had high hopes for her. She lived rather well.

She was always grouped with fillies her own age. As a result, she learned whatever variation of horse behavior her peers figured out. And from what I can tell, it wasn't much. You want something another horse has, bite and kick them. Go run around when everyone else does. Be silly. But no one knew how to do simple things, such as what to do in bad weather.

She flunked out of that lifestyle and that job before she ever saw a racetrack. When I was trying her out, I asked the trainer, "Tell me what you do to make her gallop so I'll be sure I don't do that."

The answer, "If we knew, she wouldn't be for sale." Lucy was the fattest TB weanling anybody had ever seen. She was also the fattest yearling, etc. I probably should have named her Pumpkin instead of Lucy (she has her Jockey Club name but for her privacy I won't use it here.) The name, shape and color fit. Pumpkin.

So she came to me the January 1 she turned three knowing nothing except how not to run. (Though can she ever, if so inspired.) She'd never had a person mount her from the ground, but that wasn't a problem. What has been very interesting and sad to me is how she doesn't know a lot about the fundamentals of being horse.

I've kept her while we've had horses for Lily come and go, and it's been an education for her. An older mare who'd been a broodmare taught Lucy to come in out of the bad weather. Before that, Lucy would stand outside in the sleet and shiver. (Note: If I'm home I put them up and blanket them.) The older mare, Sissy, was the only horse Lucy would physically get close to. They would choose to stand in one stall together. They would nap on the ground nearby. Sissy was sweet and very beta, or maybe even zeta. She was very motherly to Lucy.

Annie, the pony, was most alpha and taught Lucy that when a little brown thing wanted your hay (or whatever), you'd better run. And Lucy did. All Annie had to do was give her The Look and Lucy was backing up fast. Lucy is pushy, but Annie is the pushiest.

And now there's Buddy. He's the pesky brother you can't entirely trust, though he grants Lucy final title as the alpha horse -- but not by much. He's taught her to dig up grass, which I've already whined about. He's taught her that if you mess with gates enough, you might be able to get them off their hinges and have the whole world at your disposal. He's taught her to open her stall door catch. The words juvenile delinquent come to mind but with Buddy it's all good fun.

I wonder how things would be different for her if she'd been part of a herd with older, life-experienced horses? She's a smart horse, but she can't figure out everything for herself. (In fact, when I had her vetted, the vet said, "The problem with this horse is that she's smart. That will give you a problem." And it has.)

I understand that this failure to belong, this upbringing without the example and supervision of caring adults is partly behind the success of gangs in our society. When you're around people (or horses) that don't know more than you do, you can't properly take care of yourself or make good decisions.