HORSES CAN BE DANGEROUS AT BOTH ENDS

I love both my horses dearly.

But they are complete opposites in everything.

When something startles us while on a walk, Sally will stand firm and tall, stare grimly in the distance at whatever might be the threat, and trusts me completely and utterly to fight it off.

While Najale, of course, will immediately rear up into the air, waving his huge hooves right at my head while wildly whinnying - and then flees at a full gallop for the farthest and/or opposite horizon, dragging me along.

Some nights I take the horses out by myself. Tonight my husband was especially tired, and the rains have provided actual grass for the horses to graze on, so I felt a sense of obligation.

And guess what?

About a half mile from the house, something startled all three of us.

My arms are now a good 18 inches longer than they were before we went for a walk this evening - I feel like an ape with my knuckles dragging on the ground.

AT THE TWIGHTLIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING

Growing up in Los Angeles, I would never have believed a photograph of what I saw this evening.

I took the horses out early tonight in hopes of terrifying someone.

We occasionally get dirt-bikers out here, racing up and down the roads, raising tons of dust and making that ultra-annoying WWWWWHHHHEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW high-pitched noise.

I admit the noise is the worse part for me. My partial deafness is concentrated in the mid-range - which means high and low pitches come through where normal voices and sounds don't. They come through EXTRA irritating.

But when we get bikers who are out here obviously to 'just have 'fun', I will either go out, stand in the middle of the road and force them to stop -- or follow them with my truck. block them on some dead-end path -- and give them a stern lecture on how these are NOT public roads, these are PRIVATE roads which we LIVE on, and if they wanna run their little cycles they are gonna have to go ELSEWHERE like the Sand Dunes outside of Yuma and do so QUICKLY before the county sherriff I have called shows up.

I'm 5'9", in my fifties, and believe me, I can make anyone under the age of 43 and 2 months on a bike SHAKE in their little black boots.

Which is what I was intending to do when I took the horses out, but as an additional threat, cut them off with two horses, neither of which has ANY fear of machines, motors or people.

But before any dirt bikes returned, I caught sight of the clouds glowing in the last beams of the setting sun.

And suddenly the silly dirt-biker didn't matter at all.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Yesterday evening, I was allowing both horse some grazing time, and something spooked them both at the same instant.

Now, horses are large, strong and extremely powerful animals who nevertheless can panic and bolt at a rude gesture from a passing monarch butterfly.

So when you have a horse on a lead rope, and he or she decides to bolt, you do have a few choices:

1. You can hang on to the rope and be drug on the ground for... well, for as long as you want or can.
2. You can risk serious rope burn and try to slow down 900+ lbs. of force scampering off.
3. You can drop the rope, and rely on training and/or voice to cause the horse to stop and come back.
4. You can drop the rope, let the horse race, buck and run around until he gets tired enough to come back home.

Option 4 is normally the one I have to resort to.

And yesterday, my two horses actually did respond to my voice, came to a halt, and waited for me to catch up and get hold of the lead ropes.

Unfortunately, today both horses obviously remembered how much fun that unrestrained frolic has been and decided to take off again right when I opened the pasture gate to feed them.

THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL

This seems to happen to all of us at different times in our lives

You notice, just out of the corner of your eye a shopping cart beginning to run down the slope... and then you realize it is YOUR shopping cart full of $235 worth of your family's meals.

You see a group of kids climbing to a dangerous height in the local oak tree... and then you recognize that the child serving as the ringleader and highest climber is YOURS.

Your nose wrinkles as you smell something disgusting... and then become conscious that it is emanating from YOUR baby like evil death rays from an alien's weapon.

Tonight I had one of those experience.

I saw a beautiful black and white horse galloping wild and free across an open field.

Unfortunately, it was MY horse, completely out of control, racing about a half mile away in the opposite direction.

Both horses have been reasonably well-behaved walking a ways down the road with me and then grazing for a half hour on the sparse growth that exploded out of our sand from the latest 0.000035 inch downpour of moisture (in other words, completely symbolic rain that still encourages what plant-life we have to germinate - it's an Arizonan thing).

So I felt comfortable about taking them out right after sunset in the falling light to munch a little bit of greenery.

Silly me.

My horse, Najale, suddenly decided about half-way to our regular grazing point, that he needed to go on a little field trip.

All by himself.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with horses, control of a 800+ lb. animal is 98% mental.

You have to convince them that:

1) you are smarter,

2) you are the one who makes all decisions in the relationship, and

3) you are in control of every single situation.

(Hmm... sounds depressingly like the husband-role in the 50's)

Unfortunately, my horse occasionally doesn't think my controlling decisions are very smart, and once he jerks control out of my hand (the lead rope attached to his halter), there really isn't much I can do.

Thankfully, he has always come back... eventually.

And he did tonight... after galloping around two neighbors' houses, getting one other local horse into hysterics trying to join him, and driving the mare (who I was now somewhat desperately holding onto) into a whinnying frenzy trying to join him.

At least my neighbors got a nice show to watch this evening.