Every morning I leave for work before Roman is even out of the bed. So before I walk out the door, I always kiss him on the cheek and tell him I love him. Sometimes he is able to coherently respond…other times he stays sound asleep. A couple of weeks ago, I did not have my jeans on yet because they were in the dryer. But I was not going back into our bedroom, so I went ahead and kissed Roman on the cheek and told him I loved him. He was awake this time and responded with his groggy “I love you too, be careful.” Except right as I walked out of the door he shouted “hey, you forgot to put your pants on!!!” It was pretty funny….guess you had to be there. Except you couldn’t be there because I wasn’t wearing pants. ANYWAYS, so now when I leave in the mornings I say “I love you baby. I’m wearing pants today” and Roman gives a sleepy nod of approval.
This has nothing to do with anything.
I may or may not have said anything about them before, but I have two horses…. One of my horses is a full-blooded quarter horse named Stardust. She’s a sweetheart, although she kind of likes to be by herself. The other horse is half quarter horse, half appaloosa and his name is Cupid. Cupid is very special. VERY special.
I got Cupid when he was only five or six months old. My teenage self wanted him so that Stardust could have a friend and also because I thought it would be fun to raise a baby horse. Cue the side-look at my parents and the all important question: What were you guys THINKING when you said yes to this crazy idea??!??
When I first met Cupid, he had a bunch of scars across the front of his right shoulder. “What happened to him?” I asked. “He was running with his half-brother and ran through a barbwire fence because he couldn’t stop.” …..That should have been a clue. A few weeks later and sweet little Cupid was moved to his new home. Stardust decided that he was her baby and they got along really well. Note to all you people: sweet little Cupid did not stay sweet long. Don’t get me wrong, he is really pretty and really smart, but he is also really stubborn and a pain in the butt. He also enjoys biting electric fences while they are on. Did I mention he was special??
I recently made the decision to board my two horses at a friend’s house. I’m not home enough to really take care of them, and my Dad doesn’t even really like them, so they weren’t getting a whole lot of attention. Plus, my friend is going to train Cupid so he won’t be such a blockhead. This past Sunday afternoon was moving day…it was also the day that I *almost* decided to just shoot Cupid and sell him so he can be turned into glue. Okay, that’s a little extreme.
Cupid has a love-hate relationship with trailers. When he was young, he freaked out while loading into a trailer, reared up, banged his head, fell over, and got stuck upside down. So on one side, he’s pretty terrified of them. On the other side, he is like a horse version of Curious George. Leave a horse trailer out in the pasture with the doors open and he stays in there…I guess because horse trailers are fun UNLESS someone wants you to actually be in the horse trailer.
My Dad laughed at me when I told him we were moving the horses on Sunday afternoon. “Good luck getting Cupid in the trailer” he stated. “Whatever, he’ll be fine. I’m more worried about getting Stardust in there…she hates trailers.” I just love it when I’m trying to prove my dad wrong….it always leads me to do something stupid. So when it comes time to load up the horses, I decide to load Cupid first. He’s such a curious horse that he’ll load right up, and when Stardust sees that he is in there, she won’t want to be left behind so she’ll load right up too….then we can all be on our merry little way and the all will be right in the world. (If that is not sarcastic enough for you people, then I don’t know what is.)
As I guessed, Cupid got right in the trailer after only about five minutes of sweet-talking and bribing him with grain. I walked him up to the front of the trailer and clipped his halter to the short rope so he couldn’t go anywhere. And that is where I made my fatal mistake.
If I had left Cupid untied and just closed the gate behind him, he probably would have been fine. But as soon as I clipped his head and place and he realized that he was stuck…he panicked. I’m not exactly sure what happened next….I think he slammed his head into mine which then slammed the back of my head into the trailer….but I’m honestly not sure. All I know is that in a split second, I had gotten hit twice and Cupid was no longer in the trailer. THANK GOD his halter was a little too big, so when he jerked his head it came right off. Had it not come off, things probably would have been a lot worse. But for the next hour, things were a lot worse. Stubborn Cupid emerged…and he was NOT getting in that trailer again.
After my friend fought with him for a few minutes, we decided to try a different approach: load Stardust and then maybe once he sees that the trailer did not try to kill her, Cupid will load up. She walked right in without any trouble at all. I did NOT clip her head to the side of the trailer and instead closed the gate behind her and got out. Cupid did not care. He pulled and kicked and reared up and snorted and threw his head around like he was at a scream-o concert.
My poor friend got yanked around like she was a yo-yo, and both her mother and my husband almost got kicked quite a few times. All the while, my normally nervous Stardust was calmly standing there ignoring the whole scenario. God bless her. It was not until we got out the lunge whip out that Cupid finally decided to give up the fight and get in the $*&#$ @! trailer. Silly me for forgetting that I had the lunge whip…..we probably wouldn’t have had to fight him for over an hour had I brought that thing out sooner. Sorry guys.
Needless to say, we were all pretty tired by the time we arrived and unloaded the horses at their new home. I had a nice goose-egg on my forehead and a sore finger (because somewhere in the middle of all that fighting Cupid decided to try and bite my finger off.) My friend had two very sore arms the next day. And we collectively decided that next time we would just drag Cupid behind the truck rather than attempt that again. I hate it when my Dad is right.
NOTE TO PETA: dumb-dumb-head Cupid was not harmed in the writing of this post. I was, however, but you probably don’t care about that.
Also, I’m wearing pants today.
“Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with the saving might of his right hand. Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” ~Psalm 20:6-7
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