BARNYARD

The arena is too wet from the rain.
We'll ruin it, gravel bed and all if we ride on it.
Picture six 1200- 1500 lb. animals stomping on it with their hard little hooves and steel shoes and digging in for a fast lope!

So I brushed Frankie instead.
I headed over in a warm flannel shirt and stiff never-been-used rubber boots.

The boots were soooooo stiff I worried I would not be able to find the brake.
I drove slowly and came to no harm.
Neither did the drivers around me, but I wore regular shoes home just in case. Do you ever wonder what weirdo drivers are doing out there in the crush. No, don't think about that just now. Anyway.

Frankie looks bedraggled and very muddy.
He had on his blanket which was covered with dusty dry muck.
His neck and legs were exposed and they were icky.

I squished and squashed into the pen and staggered precariously through the deep mud to get the horse, who just watched me come. You'd think he'd get it that I had the halter and lead rope and that means c'mon I'm gonna' lead you outta here so get your butt over here.

Carefully I place one booted foot before the other, making my way to Frankie while Allen and Frankie watch the show...would I accidentally grab the hot wire on the electric fence again?

No, once was enough, gosh that hurt!
I detest shocks!

The halter did not fit so I sucked the boots out of the mud and headed back for the other one hanging on the gate. Wasn't Frankie wonderful to come with me?

These horses are so incredibly well trained that they actually try to get their big heads into the halters by themselves. I stand there twisting the thing this way and that trying to remember which strap goes around the nose and which goes up over the ears and is it even right side out? Of course it's right side out, no one around here would be so incompetent as to twist the darn thing in the first place...now, did I just twist it? I can't remember and there's Frankie leaning in, nosing the halter, thinking "Can we get this going or what?" while I struggle with ADHD.

I have a student.
When you ask him a question, he stares into space for a while wrinkling his brow, mouth open, thinking hard. 3 minutes later he has an answer and often he's correct!

I wish I had three minutes here to decide how to get this halter on!

I finally sort of get it right and buckle the strap wondering why it, too, is so tight. Let me interrupt this story and get straight to the trainer's later comment: "You've got the chin strap on his cheeks. It needs to be under his neck." She didn't add: AGAIN! Wonderful woman.

So I get Frankie out of the pen and he takes a few steps, pulling my arm to it's limit so as to nibble fresh grass, which he is not allowed to do, but I can't stop him 'cuz I got to close the gate so Allen doesn't get out, although Allen just watches the action from his cement pad across the pasture! I grab the rope with my teeth (Gosh, I hope no one is looking!) and reach out for the chain and hook the gate. So embarrassing this incompetence when you think I've done this how many umpteen times! And anyway, like my teeth could keep Frankie here.

We clop to the barn. I hook Frankie up to the fence.
I get his filthy blanket off and start brushing.
Ooops, I'm supposed to pick out his feet first.

He's sooooooooo good about holding up his hooves while I bend over to scrape out the mud. Just picks each one up and lets me hold them on my knee and brush out the crap. Gee, that's a ROCK in there, poor guy. I forget to breathe and start to gasp at my exertions...I am holding up a horse here! BREATHE!

Now I'm hot, even though it's only 54 degrees, but it is sunny and and Frankie is so warm and toasty as the sun soaks in to his shiny-as-a-copper-penny fuzzy winter coat. And that horse hair is so soft. I'm so hot that off comes the jacket.

Then the curry comb...such a scratchy metal tool...wouldn't it hurt their skin? No they're too tough and anyway it doesn't really get through all that fur.

All the mud comes off crackling. Turns into dust in the wind. Then the brush: always start at the head, but he doesn't want me to do the ears so I massage the dry mud off with my gloved hands and move down the long muscled neck to the shoulders, then the back, then the tummy, then the haunches and finally the spindly (by comparison) legs.

I skip the mane and tail 'cuz I'm lazy. He's really very clean considering the wet poopy earth. Horse poop is pretty clean stuff: they are vegetarians you know. It's just digested grass.

Back goes the blanket, back goes Frankie, back shuts the gate and back go I. Back home to laziness.

It's just great to have the day off!

And I really do spend time thinking about dear old George and Abe. They are my favorite presidents. Though hearing President Obama's first news conference tonight, I think I may be adding him to the short list.

Do you think he likes gentle chestnut quarter horses on the older side?