Betty Ford for Horses

We've had a rash of bad weather....so I don't really expect my rides to be stellar since the horses are all a little high. But even after being inside all last week, my horse was Mr. Chill (see last week's posts). Then this Tuesday, I had the worst lesson in the historyof all lessons! I wanted to attribute it to a cold front coming in during the middle of our lesson. How bad was it? So bad that when I half halted, Red shifted UP not down! We had 4 spooks in 45 minutes!. He went over the edge of sanity, and I followed him there. LeSIGH!
 
I let my barn owner know so that when my horse was being lunged during this week's bad weather, she would know that he was just a tad fiery.  Her description of the experience was as follows, "I would ask him to slow down and relax, and he said, "WHY WALK WHEN YOU CAN TROT!?!?!??!?!"

Later she went into her horse's stall, and saw alfalfa strewn all over. What horse leaves a single flake strewn all over their stall? It is usually the first thing to get eaten. So she did some more investigating. Her Sr. Citizen Schoolmaster and Red are the only ones that get some alfalfa with their dinners. So she went into Red's stall and saw the same alfalfa strewn stall. Then she went to her new part time barn worker and asked him how much alfalfa he was handing out. His answer? 12 inches. uhhh. that's about 4 flakes of alfalfa. He was confusing the alfalfa and the hay. So instead of the 1 psychological flake of alfalfa, they were getting 4 flakes and only 1 flake of hay! No wonder the horses were freaks! They were like tweaking meth heads! Or five year pageant kids high on fully leaded Coca Cola and Pixie Sticks! The barn owner was surprised that either of us are alive to laugh about it! I am so relieved to know where the crazyass behavior came from so suddenly!
 
Needless to say, our horses are going through alfalfa withdrawals this weekend! The new worker was probably pleased with how well loved and how well he was getting along wtih the cranky redheads...that behavior will soon go away once they realize that they can't score on the alfalfa anymore!
 
So, I am really looking forward to Mr. Chill returning to me undersaddle as soon as he gets out of Betty Ford for horses!