The Honest Courtesan

Horses are, in many ways, quite fragile creatures; there are so many ways to throw their health off-balance that it’s difficult to keep track of them all.  Last week I extended the paddock fence to enclose the north lawn, which means lots of lush, sweet grass for the animals to graze on; of course Shiloh doesn’t have the horse sense (sorry about that) to pace herself (sorry about that one too) in order to avoid colic, and that meant a bloated, gassy pony whining until she managed to poop, and then immediately going back and gorging some more.  She seems to have mostly adjusted now, but for a few days there I got rather tired of her complaining loudly all afternoon, every afternoon.  So I decided to force her to exercise in order to get things moving, and the quickest, easiest way to accomplish this was to annoy her into running away from me.  So for several days, I would periodically chase her, waving my arms as though they were tentacles and shouting, “RUN! FLEE! RUN!” and “Come back, I want to eat you!”  Naturally it worked, and I have the piles of pony manure to prove it.  Eventually she seems to have figured out that she didn’t need to stuff herself into sickness like an American at Thanksgiving, so I can probably skip the Demogorgon impressions for now.  But I must admit that I laughed like a hyena every time I did it for a few days there; sometimes it’s good to have a proper adult excuse for behaving like an imbecile.

Oh, and by the by, I lied in the second sentence; I’m not really sorry at all.