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One of the other loves of my life, is my horse Merlin. He's a complicated fellow, as most horses are. He is quite typically herdbound, in that he hates to be away from his herd and goes into panic mode if he's in a pasture alone. That's pure instinct, because in a horse's mind that is danger. There are some horses this doesn't bother too much, but mine isn't one of them. He doesn't really like being ridden alone either, but he's brave enough to do it. This usually means long conversations on my part because he listens to every word I say.
I am quite horrified by how fat he's got this year. He doesn't normally, but then I haven't had much time to ride. I don't want him to founder so I thought I'd take him a bit further than usual today. His idea of rebelliousness when away from the herd is to toss his head. Annoying but relatively harmless. I just try to get his focus back on me and get him to pay attention. Not always easy since Merlin thinks himself superior at times. Goes back, I think to when he was a five minute stallion and while he's not particularly studdy or has a mean bone in his body, he can decide that what Merlin thinks is best. But today he happily plowed through extremely muddy ponds and around a huge plowed field. At bit ansty at the very far corner where he definitely couldn't see the herd, and he grumbled a bit at the teeny tiny hills where, OMG work! But he was pretty relaxed most of the way and while I want him to lose weight, because of his back prob I'm not going to push it. Had one short trot and that was it. The rest, a nice steady walk.




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