Mr. Spooky

The big wind blew through last night. You know, the one that spawned all those tornadoes in Oklahoma, the one that had hurricane-strength gusts taking down trees all around here.

The wind was shaking the barn, and although the barn door slide open parallel to the barn walls, last night they were flapping in and out, which they aren’t designed to do. The Plexiglas panels in the windows were rattling in their frames, and every once in a while there would be an unexplained thunk or crash.

Champagne was very dubious about entering the indoor, quite sure he didn’t want to walk too close to the windows, and rattley-snorting with every step. He may be a calm, phlegmatic horse but he has definite opinions, and his opinion was “This is WAY too dangerous.”

We did our usual routine, warming up with some leg yields, walk-stop transitions, backing up, turns on the forehand, then trotting and walk-trot transitions and changes of tempo within the trot all to get him listening to my leg, but every once in a while Mr. Bomb-Proof would spook sideways a few steps.

Not that it’s a good thing, but hey! I stayed in the saddle, nice and upright, balanced enough to use the reins and my weight to bring things back into control, and was able to continue trotting and even cantering. When I think about last year in the spring, when a sideways spook dumped me, broke my finger, and reinjured my sacrum, I realize I have come a long way as a rider (my beautiful dressage saddle should get some of the credit too, of course.)