Differing Distances, Morning Walk Stories

Awareness of the outside world. Post #5000. Or possibly yesterday. WordPress & I disagree. [Blog Milestone, 4000]

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This Week

Walked Monday. One lap, i.e. 0.2 miles, followed by power nap. Coming back slowly. See yesterday. [Horsekeeping, Not]

Last Week

No walks post-surgery. Combination of inclement weather & conserving my energy for exciting adventures such as a medical appointment or the blacksmith visit, even though the other barn minion had to hold both horses. Doesn’t take much to tap out my energy these days.

The Week Before

Walked all week, including the morning of surgery. Better than the alternative of sitting around the house waiting to leave for the hospital. [Short Walks]

However.

All walks were half the usual distance, 3 laps, or 0.6 miles. At first, because of my wrist. Then, because the horses honored the month of November by becoming absolute turkeys.

For the first few days after I splatified my wrist, the horses walked just fine. As per normal. Then one day, suddenly, in the middle of a walk, Milton put his hind feet in the air and ran back to the barn. Rodney of course joined in.

As best we can figure, they determined that I was incapacitated and decided to take advantage. That is our best explanation for the sudden outbreak of anomalous behavior. Once we determined this was a policy statement rather than an aberration we dug out and implemented the remedial lead shanks.

Milton was actually cool with it.

Us: (chain over nose)
Milton: Busted!

And then he was fine.

Rodney did not get the memo. Oh, he got the first memo about running around like an idiot. He did not get the correction memo. The first day he was furious and outraged that we would dare to discipline his magnificent self. After that he was just plain rude. We finally ended up switching horses. Rodney was sufficiently pushy to require two working hands.

We retired the chains but kept both horses on leadlines, including walking back to the barn. Two leadlines meant that the other barn minion walked with us instead of waiting at the turnaround to dispense cookies. Walking is not his forte, so we stayed with short walks.

Coda

For a simple jaunt, our morning walks can be filled with drama.

Onwards!
Katherine