My Happy Horse

So, this last month I was in a pretty dark place and I had been avoiding my amazing mare... I didn't have the patience to deal with her, so I figured it would be best to just let her have a vacation, hang out in her pasture with her herd and get fat. It's easy to lose your temper with a horse if you're not in the right mindset, and I didn't want to foul up our relationship. It's not fair to punish an animal for acting the way it's programmed to.

I wanna give a huge hug to @Tenderiser for our brainstorming sessions. Helping her write a character who's into horses made me appreciate my own mare again. I was all nostalgic and so I forced myself to go to the barn this afternoon, and lo and behold my mare is enjoying the good life. Green pasture, bunch of friends to hang out with, and no work!

When she saw me coming with her halter, she looked very interested, but turned away when I got close. This was our conversation (not spoken aloud, that would have been weird...) :

"That looks like work, I'm good." So I made her run.

"You wanna stay out here, you gotta run around."

"But running around is hard work and I don't wannaaa! Look how fat I am!"

"Well, come here then. You can be lazy with me."

"Oh okay."

So I take her into the barn and brush her off -- it takes forever because she's been rolling around in the mud for a month... I hope all that grooming felt good. Sheesh. Also thank you, miss mare, for not smacking me in the face with your tail. I hate it when you do that. -.-

I get as much mud as I can off her and take her to the round pen. I'm expecting a frisky exercise session, since she's been a couch potato for so long, but she really didn't do anything spectacular. She zoomed around for a minute, gave me a "Yeah? Make me!" once, but that was all. So I put her through the paces, nothing too high-energy (she's out of shape after all), and we call it a day.

She's such a sweet thing, all adorable and getting nice and fuzzy for the winter. She's like a giant stuffed animal right now. So cute.