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by Cathy Morris, Klamath Falls, Oregon, Golden Slippers Haflingers
Our 7 year old gelding Whit is a
strange combination of typically Haflingerish respect for the
established rules and escape artist. This particular
contradiction does not seem to get his panties all in
a bunch. He just goes with the flow.
When Whit was a young 3 year old, I was taking a nap on our couch
one summer day. The gate to Whit's private little pasture
required an opposable thumb to open, so it did not bother me that
I could hear him working on it for about an hour before I dozed
off. Like most mothers, I was awakened by the silence....
When I sleepily went to the door, I saw that Whit had gotten the
gate open and was grazing in the lush yard. "You bad
horse!" I yelled. "You get back in your pasture. Right
now!" Amazingly, Whit picked his head up from the grass and
walked immediately back in the pasture, turning to look at me
through the open gate with a disgruntled look on his face, and
his ears laid back. I walked out to the gate, closed it, and
shortly added a chain latch to it.
In time, we began to regularly let Whit on the yard to graze
freely. Somehow he got boundary trained. I think that was due to
the policy of putting him back in a dry lot if he strayed more
than once on a yard visit. There were times that he just could
not resist some of the grass along the long gravel drive to our
house, but there were boring repercussions for Whit if he did so.
One day when Whit was on the yard, I was taking a nap on the
couch again. (I want it known here and now that I don't get many
naps, it's just a matter of fact that, if I do try for a nap,
that is when something happens!) I heard a knock on the door.
Sleepily going to the door (again) I found two men there.
"We were doing some roof repair for your neighbors and we
were just leaving, but
we wanted you to know," they said, "that there is a
horse loose on the road."
"Oh." said I, yawning. Is he on the gravel road? Past
the yard?"
"Yes." the man replied in a worried tone.
"Well, if you're leaving now," I said, "would you
mind doing me a favor? When you drive by that horse, would you
tell him to get his butt home."
The man's eyes grew big in surprise, he hesitated, then answered
with a feeble, "Sure." that sounded more like a
question than an answer. I knew immediately that the man was
probably a horse person, and positively thought I was nuts.
I walked to my front deck to watch how this would go down. Whit
was only 10 or 12 feet off his established boundary, but
definitely on terra inferma. When the men's truck stopped next to
Whit, I could see them roll down the window and talk to the
horse. Whit looked at them calmly. "Not good." thought
I. They were only 75 feet or so away, and I couldn't hear their
voices, so they weren't being very demanding, and Whit had a
rather smart-a** horse expression on his face that spoke volumes
about his intentions.
While the men were still pleading their case with the fat yellow
horse terrorist, I hollered out in my best Darth Vader voice,
"WHIT! YOU BAD, HORRIBLE HORSE! YOU GET YOURSELF HOME RIGHT
NOW!"
I saw Whit's eyeballs grow huge, and he started to lunge forward.
That was, of course, the wrong direction. "DON'T EVEN THINK
IT, WHIT. HOME! NOW!" I shouted. Whit reared, whirled and
galloped home, well past the boundry and into the back yard. The
truck with the men in it stayed there on the road for about 3
minutes before driving away. I wanted to see their faces, but
just couldn't manage it.
Whit is 7 now. I'm still waiting to get that nap.