He came up the driveway a few weeks ago. Nice cat. Very sweet. Very friendly. A "drop off", apparently. Sometimes people will abandon their pets near a working barn thinking they'll find a good home there. Oh, as often as not they're right I suppose.
This guy is cute. Barely more than a kitten.
And he's talented!
But. He has some Siamese blood in him somewhere. You can see a little Siamese in the shape of his face. For the time being he's living in a stall. And he will. Not. Shut. Up. And he has that distinctive Siamese voice. Of course all the horses think there's a mountain lion in there.
They were all kinds of spooky and bug eyed for a couple of days.
No, I didn't let her stomp him!
Now. About those sinister bananas. I go fetch L last Saturday. It was nice out. It was a little chilly and breezy. But nice. For February. And apparently our new kitty had all the horses a little anxious. L was spooking at *everything*. So there we are, warming up, bareback, and she's huffing and snorting and crow hopping around. And then... there's this.
Those are bananas. Someone had thrown a couple of bananas out to the compost pile and missed. Landed by the bedding pile.
L is a mare. Some days she has the heart of a lion. And some days she'll spook at that bucket that wasn't there yesterday. Or maybe that blue bucket turned into a red bucket overnight. Mares will do that.
As we were jigging past the bedding pile, whose plastic wrap was blowing a little in the breeze, she spotted those bananas. She leaped and she spun and got all poofy. She snorted and huffed and backpedaled. While I'm hanging on. Bareback.
I was gently managing this behavior but really, when she started up at the bananas. That was just completely ridiculous. Completely unacceptable. So I had to put some leg on her and manhandle her beyond her distractions.
Which is when I noticed. With or without a saddle you can't "stick" to a horse. Oh of course you can use your balance and center of gravity to your advantage. And sometimes things can get so out of hand you're not gonna stick to your horse not matter what. But what I was really doing was controlling the way she moved keeping her from moving in such a way that she'd lose me.
Sometimes I get it right and we went on to have a most pleasant ride.
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