Today was an absolutely beautiful day, so of course I took advantage, and went riding. It was Ibn’s turn, and I decided to take a little different route. We went along our property line down the backside to try to get to Laughing Horse with out going down our road. It was pretty rough, but Ibn really does well when we go cross-country. Once on Laughing horse, we followed the road. I’ve never been all the way down Laughing Horse, and I wanted to see where it would go.
Ibn did really well until he spotted the first horse. All of a sudden he was all stallion, stopped cold, and wouldn’t move until he announced to everyone who he was. Got him going till the next horse, and so on until there were no more horses. By this time I knew it was going to be one of those days. Ibn has always been very gentlemanly, and at shows totally ignored the other horses be they mares, stallions or geldings. Actually we were pretty proud of him for that, emphasis on “were”. I guess he’s been away from that scene for so long that he’s forgotten what it’s like. I can just imagine what he’s going to do when we get to Ft Stanton, and there are hundreds of horses. Yeah I think I will let Rudy ride Ibn, and I’ll ride Marina. He can deal with all the testosterone.
Next on the trail we came across a Llama and some goats. I thought Ibn was going to jump through his skin. It took at least 10 minutes for us to get past the goats. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it, and he knew that, but he also knew that they were sure to attack even though there was a fence between him, and the goats, and they paid him never no mind. Of course it may have been the llama that he didn’t know how deal with. He’s never seen a llama. We had a Mouflan ram for a while, so goats shouldn’t have been that much different. Who knows, we finally got past the goats, and I thought that was going to be the end of it. Silly me.
By this time I guess Ibn was so jazzed up that everything was now suspect. Even the ravens that follow us everywhere spooked him when he saw their shadows. Give me a break, ravens? We have a mated pair that has claimed our house as the center of their territory. The dogs chase them constantly. How they think they are going to catch them is beyond me, since the dogs can’t fly. Frankly I think the ravens fly over the dogs on purpose just to tease them. Even the wild animals around us have to be different. Anyway, ravens are no big deal normally since they are constantly around.
After the ravens it was the deer that spooked him. Like I said it was one of those days. Ibn jumped at everything, and at nothing. Now I’m going to have to take him down that road, and others that have horses just to get him to behave himself again. Definitely one of the disadvantages of living on the ranch is the absence of normal every day activities. While I may love it, it’s not necessarily the best thing for the horses, not if we intend to sell them, which we do.
Oh well, we finally made it home, and it was nice enough to give Ibn a real bath, soap and all. Ibn was not pleased. In California he got spoiled because we had hot & cold water. While we want to eventually put in a hot water heater at the barn, it’s going to be a while before that happens. There are way more important things than hot water for my spoiled little boy that takes precedence. Ibn kept squirming this way, and that. Then insult upon insult, I had the audacity to wash his face. I think that was the point where he started to plot his revenge. I got him all washed off good, rinsed off, squeeged, conditioned (mane & tail), and combed. He was looking good, and fairly dry when I took him back to his stall. He had left over breakfast, so he had munchies for after his workout, and I expected that he would go eat first thing. Wrong! Uncharacteristically Ibn went straight to Storm, and went down to roll. I yelled at him to no avail. What in blazes was he thinking? I didn’t give him a good bath just so he could get all dirty again. He’s usually pretty good, being a priss, and all. Normally he can’t stand getting dirty, which is why it was so unexpected. Dingy stallion, it was the perfect ending to a perfectly silly ride.
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