Thursday, February 5, 2009

Cows may be the scariest!

John gets the award for being the best non-horsey boyfriend this week.

Today he took the initiative to call the farmer about 1/4 mile down the road to see if I could do trot sets around the cow fields since I was whining about going around and around our field. He then decided I may need an escort since P-man can be a bit crazy leaving the farm, so he rode the quad along with us. Prophet was quite good down the road, barely flinching as cars zoomed by, however once we got around the farm - there was very scary machinery that of course we've never seen the likes of before. He got over it, trotted briskly over the hill behind the John on the quad when he saw the scariest thing in the whole world --- COWS.

The field of cows saw him at about the same time, which meant a mass migration towards us. Once I began to feel my brave event horse's heartbeat through my saddle, I figured it was time for me to bail and be a groundsman. We led around the farm for a while before adventuring back to our farm.

Now, there are times when, as a rider, I'm pretty sure I can see the horses brain leave its head, and the 'walk' back was definitely one of those moments. Luckily we had John and the quad as a blocker, but that meant we alternated between a blood pumping extended trot, and doing the "Ted" which is a nice canter-in-place out-of-control movement.

Eventually we had some nice flat work once we got back -- that is until he almost dumped me on the 'victory gallop' we always finish the ride with. I always let him have a nice loose canter around the field to finish off the rides and he decided to spook at John walking up the driveway. After a swift reaction, he went back to doing some great flat work (but I didn't let him have another victory gallop after the first one failed).

Ever the comedian he is....

3 comments:

Boss Mare Eventing said...

My friends horse was always deathly afraid of cows. He never got over it, it was his thing lol

Jen said...

Cows! There was a pasture full of them at Tiki's first barn. Glad you had no disaster!

20 meter circle of life said...

funny my horse never had a problem with cows till Sunday. A momma cow was gving birth about 30 feet from the barn during my Sunday lesson, and I think that was just to much for my gelding to bear!! We have open sides on our arena so he could hear and see what was going on