HOME!

I'm finally back.

I came back earlier than everyone else because I wanted to see Nutters and make sure his feet were still in line, but I was too exhausted.  It's been a hellish two weeks.

Anyway, the following happened on the last walk I took with Nuts.  Anne was riding Gene.

As we came out into the first field after the woods off of the property, we found that the field had been marked for what turned out to be a Halloween competitive trail ride.  There were posts in the middle of the grass, with colored streamers flapping in the breeze.  Peanut saw one, started to walk towards it, and I thought that it would be great to have him touch it.

Once we got over to the post, he did indeed touch it and he got a cookie.  He really didn't seem to care - in fact he seemed fascinated by it.  I looked over at one point to see Anne bringing Gene over.  The Old Man was giving the streamer the stink eye, so I grabbed a cookie and held it out to him to encourage him to come over.  That did it, he instead flung himself over 90 degrees away from me and nearly unseated Anne.  Oh, was he unhappy after that, and I ended up having to give him a cookie for each step closer to the streamers that he took.  He was truly terrified (which is bringing up the sight issue in my mind again).

As I was trying to lure Gene over, Peanut was getting pissy that the scaredy-app was getting cookies and he was not.  Peanut's response was to start chewing the streamers and gnawing at the top of the post in frustration.  On one side I had a horse in panic mode, on the other I had a horse calmly doing his best to idly destroy the object of panic.

It was oddly surreal.

After what seemed like an eternity, Gene allowed the streamers to touch his nose and we could carry on with our walk.