The husband put the horses out this morning of his own free will. Normally I would be excited about this but we are supposed to get severe thunderstorms. I don’t like them out in lightning. So it was time for me to put a theory I had to the test.
I’ve spent inordinate amounts of time teaching Prize that when I’m leading her when I walk she walks at the exact same speed I do and when I stop she freezes. This is for general safety and to make her do well in halter classes. It turns out that it is also incredibly useful when you need to lead a horse while on crutches.
I went hopping out to the pasture with the halters slung around my neck. I had to get through knee deep grass to get to the horses. Spirit wasn’t having anything to do with a strange half-metal person hopping towards him so I went to Prize. I caught her and usually she just follows me. But I think I was going too slow so she wasn’t sure that I really wanted to take her somewhere. So I went back and grabbed her lead rope and told her to Walk On. Walk On usually tells her that she’s working now so pay attention. She did great. She never bumped me even though at first she wasn’t quite sure about the go one step, stop and readjust crutches, and go one step routine we were doing. Once she got the rhythm it went fine. To get into the barn there is a step up. She put her front feet up and waited for me to get up and then brought her back feet up. What a good girl!
(We’ll ignore the fact that she’s the reason I’m on crutches in the first place.)
Spirit eventually wandered in and was prepared to be bad. I’m not quite as disabled as I appear and was able to take a quick step on the good leg and grab him forcefully when he tried to duck out of my way. That took the fight right out of him and he went into his stall.
Now I know the husband will try to beg off horse duty since I was able to do this. But what takes him about 5 minutes took me 20 so he’s not off the hook yet.
