I Slept With A Horse. :-)

Y'all know how the Fourth of July is in the South, right? There are, as someone posted on COTH, states near me where it's legal to buy just about anything short of an ICBM - and boy, do they! And then they let them off. Near me.

I've always had OTTBs, and they tend to be remarkably sanguine about stuff like this, particularly if they are coming off the claiming/fairs circuits, where fireworks are entirely likely to figure already in their world view as "stupid humans doing stupid human stuff which need not concern me".

A 3 y/o Saddlebred, on the other hand...!

In my neighborhood, the Fourth of July pre-game show started last night at dusk. I'd had a long day driving to/from Knoxville to look at a horse trailer (didn't buy it) and was pretty worn out, sitting in the living room quietly reading.

Quattro's paddock is right up next to my house. My general rule of thumb is that if I can *hear* him galloping, it's time to go investigate. There were 2 sets of fireworks going off on opposite sides of the valley we live in. And yep, galloping and screaming.

Quattro has a good brain. He really does. He was sweaty and nervous and wild-eyed, but when he saw me come out, he came galloping over to the gate and stood with me - not quietly, but at least not frenzied to the point of saying "No" to the horse cookies!

I am blessed with a fairly relaxed and phlegmatic personality which is very useful in circumstances where a young horse is convinced it's having a crisis. It took 20 minutes or so, but I was able to talk him down off the ledge; he relaxed enough to have a sip of water and graze a little bit - but only near me.

I went up and sat on my back porch, one side of which constitutes the fence line of his paddock. He was fine with that, but stayed grazing very close by. Every time I went back in the house for any reason, even for a couple of seconds, the screaming hysteria would start right back up again.

I thought about putting him away in the barn, but decided that might actually be worse, since he'd be the only horse inside, and I bet the noise actually echoes a good bit more inside the concrete. I didn't have any Ace; that was ruled out.

Well... Sigh... Whatcha gonna do. I slept with my horse. Brought the spare air mattress out, fired it up, used HRH Avery's old wool dress sheet and a turnout for blankets, and camped out for the night.

I'm not complaining. It was actually rather nice. Full moon, nice and cool, no bugs after I turned the porch light off. My mostly-feral cat, Liam - who does have friendly moods, but not often - decided it would be nice to join me, so he got under the covers and found a comfy spot. Quattro was fine so long as his Boss Mare was present - though, interestingly, he would NOT stray very far away from me at all, and hugged the rail right near me until the fireworks stopped. I dozed off here and there but made sure to call to him quietly every time I woke back up.

When the fireworks did finally stop, around 1:00 a.m., frankly I was enjoying the whole thing so much that I decided to hang out. Pretty much every horse I have ever owned has, at some point, given me the necessity of sleeping out with them overnight, usually due to colic. If the causative event is sufficiently low-key, it can actually provide a lot of insight into your horse's routine and what s/he gets up to when your back is turned. I find this informative.

What I learned about Quattro's routine was:

* He grazes his paddock in big, sweeping, clockwise circles. This gives him the opportunity to visit the cows on the Cow Side; stop and have a poop in the Poop Corner; stop and have a drink at the trough; stop and have a doze in the Sleeping Corner; stop and have a pee in the Pee Corner; and repeat. As you can see, Quattro is meticulously organized!

* The reason he insists on having his "Night Light" (back porch light) on - which my fellow Twitterers will know I've been puzzling over for the last couple of weeks - is this: He likes to doze off on his feet with his back toward the Night Light, which is affixed to the wall of the house where it abuts into his paddock. Positioning himself thus means that (a) no predators (real or imagined!) can attack him from behind, because of the house wall; and (b) The circle of light at his head gives him better sight of any perceived predators that might approach from the other three sides. This makes a HECK of a lot of sense for a horse who is turned out alone without benefit of a herd.

Clever boy.

And so we passed a peaceful night. I slept with my horse and gained some useful information!

More of the same tonight, I would imagine. The adventure continues.