Yesterday, I went out to the stables for a leisurely, afternoon ride. For those of you who don't know about this part of my life, I volunteer at a therapeutic riding academy near my house. I do barn work, exercise the horses, help out in therapy lessons where I can. It's pretty rewarding work. It also gives me yet another corner of my life where something goofy can happen.
First off, it was freezing and I was tired. But I've committed to this, and according to the log, no one else has been able to brave the weather long enough to exercise the horses in a while, so I got off my lazy butt and did it. Oh, and it doesn't help that I live literally 3 minutes away. One would think this is a good thing, but it's not because I feel even more guilty on the days that I can't make it out. I live 3 minutes away, I can't even use icy roads as an excuse.
Back to yesterday's incident. I get there and head out to the pasture for my four legged friend, Patches. She's a beautiful tri color, blue eyed tovero paint. She's also the laziest animal that I've ever come across. But I love her all the same, and she's usually the horse I choose to work with because she needs the work the most. Normally, she has this game she likes to play. It's called "chase me in the pasture for 20 minutes." Apparently, she thinks its reeally fun. I always tell her I don't want to play, but I guess in equine-speak, that means, "I LOVE this game!!! Let's play forever!" Yesterday, someone was on my side because she chose to play the game for 30 seconds before giving up. Not sure what I would have done had she continued, I'd have been tired, cold, and now walking the entire perimeter of this massive pasture on foot. After I got her in the barn, groomed and saddled up, I decide it would be nice to do a mini-trail ride up and down the long road from the main road to the stable. It's a pretty view and I was having a great time until we made a new friend. The road we were walking on has fences along the edges with large pastures on either side. One side is loaded with donkeys. The other is an odd mix of horses, cows and alpaca. One of said alpaca decided it wanted to follow us along side the fence. My first thought? These things are a cousin of llamas. What do llamas do? Spit. Great. And it's not like I can just distance myself from the fence because 10 feet to the other side is another fence. I was alright with it until I heard it make some pretty bizarre noises, some of which resemble what my dad sounds like when he's winding up for a massive lugey. Mind you, I've never seen these things actually spit, I just know they can. So I'm a little unclear as to the kind of distance these puppies can make. Luckily I remembered a trick from my Washington days- don't make eye contact. So I spent 99% of this leisurely afternoon ride staring at the road, avoiding eye contact with an ANIMAL. I felt pretty childish but then again, the alternative was to spend the day covered in alpaca spit.
Let's pause for a second. There are few things in this world that utterly gross me out. One of those things happens to be spit. I HATE, DETEST AND LOATHE spit. I actually make sure I have as little spit as possible in my mouth at all times because just having an excess grosses me out. The smell is horrible and it's just nasty to me. Bleh. I just threw up in my mouth thinking about it. So the thought of being drenched (or even lightly sprayed, for that matter) in alpaca spit is like a nightmare for me. I kept waiting for the damn animal to lose interest in me and Patches but oh no, this was quite the persistent little fudger. And it's a good thing I'm confident with my control with horses, because about halfway through, Patches got a wild hair up her ass and quite powerfully decided she wanted to say hi to our new "friend." Um, no ma'am. We'll just stay our happy little butts on this side of the road, thanks.
We made it back in one piece, dry and spit free. I was originally planning to go up and down the road several times for about an hour, but I'm pretty sure we can all guess how my re-evaluation of that decision went. So here's my recap of yesterday- spent a good hour and a half arguing with an Easy Bake oven and then the afternoon giving an alpaca the cold shoulder. I sure know how to have some eventful weekends, let me tell you.
No comments:
Post a Comment