Ben: The Horror! or, Hay there!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Poor Ben. Poor pathetic victim of a cruel owner. Will he ever get over his crushing disappointment?

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

There are some things in the life of my horse Ben that he can rely on. He can put his faith in. He knows, with crystalline certainty, are true.

Water is wet. Snow is cold. Mud is good to roll in. Hay is good. Grain is very good. Flies are annoying. And his human puts an apple in his bucket when she arrives at the barn.

Tonight, though… Well. I was late. Had a lot of rush work to get out. Didn’t get there for his bedcheck feeding in the normal window, between 6:30 and 8:00 or so. Nope, didn’t get there till after 11:00 p.m. Ben’s usual welcoming bellow had an impatient edge to it.

I walked into the four-stall, turned on the lights, put down the two five-gallon containers of warm water I’d brought from home to refill his buckets, and went over to the corner where I’d hung his haybag.

Ben whickered, surged over to his feed bucket, and looked expectantly at me.

I did not put an apple in his bucket. “Hey, I was really really busy all day and didn’t have time to shop. Whaddaya want from me anyway?”

An apple.

Ben hung his head over the stall door, looked incredulously at me, whickered, swung back to his bucket. I entered the stall, put the haybag where he could get at it, and began refilling his water buckets.

Ben hovered over me, nudging, searching. No apple. He sniffed at the haybag – No apple! He checked his bucket again. No apple! He whickered piteously, weaving between me and the bucket.

NO APPLE!!!

I am a heartless beast.

I laughed.

He’ll get an apple tomorrow morning when I arrive. I’ll make sure I go to the store to replenish the stockpile. In time, perhaps he’ll get over how shockingly I betrayed his faith in me.

He might even be willing to suck up to me again, if there’s something in it for him.

2

Damn, ETF, he sure is a beauty!

3

I’m not sure why, but while reading that, I was sure that Ben was a pig. Now I see that that’s one of the largest, strangest-looking pigs I’ve ever seen. Quite handsome, though.

4

Oh the HORROR ! The CRUELTY ! How DARE you mistreat that poor, starving horsie like that???

:smiley:

He really is gorgeous, I love a nice bay !

5

My horse had a similar “shocking” experiance last night.

The fencer wasn’t working for the last few days, I finally got a chance to work on it last night. Both of the horses had realized that it wasn’t working and were not respecting the fences authority.

SURPRISE!!! Fence is working again :smiley:

I’m not cruel, I just like my horses to respect the fence, I did laugh hard at them though!
Barrels

6

ETF you are, indeed, a heartless horse owner. :wink:

7

I, too, am a heartless pet owner. On occasion, I forget to buy pumpkin at the store, and the pugs don’t get their pumpkin in the morning.

I started giving them pumpkin after reading that it helped cure the stinkybutt that pugs and other small dogs are prone to from lack of fiber in their diet. And it works! One big spoonful of pumpkin every morning is pug Metamucil.

The first time I gave them the pumpkin, I wasn’t sure they’d like it. After all, their tastes tend towards steak, cheese, and Pup-eronis. But they gobbled it down. After about a week, they figured out that they get their pumpkin in the morning, right after they go outside to do their business. And it seems that they like pumpkin. They like it a LOT.

Lately, when I open the door for them after their outdoor morning meditation, they come in as a snarl of pugs. They run around the kitchen, biting each other and barking in delight. “It’s pumpkin time! Pumpkin! Yaaaay!” they say.

Except for the days where there is no pumpkin. They bark. They run. They look at me - “Where the hell is our pumpkin?”

I say “There is no pumpkin. I forgot to go to the store yesterday.”

They insist. “We have pumpkin in the morning. We always have pumpkin in the morning. Where the hell is it?”

“No pumpkin”

They retaliate by following me around all morning, looking at me mournfully, and muttering to each other about the abuse they get.

8

Ben is gorgeous!
They do get used to their treats. I nearly always give my mare a couple broken up carrots in her feed bin after a ride. However, there are times when (evil person that I am) I forget to bring carrots to the barn. This is unacceptable.

First she starts the “where’s my treat” dance it sounds like Ben does: move to you, move to bin, back to you, back to bin. Then she begins whomping the bin with her nose. As if that will somehow knock a hidden carrot loose. When this does not produce a carrot, I get the MARE FACE. The pinned ears, snarky face she waves at me as I walk by her stall. Clearly if she’s going to haul my ample self around, she deserves some edible reward!

And, like Ben, hay that any other time would be a wondrous thing is suddenly substandard when the carrots aren’t there as an appetizer!

9

That is one beautiful horse.

And if you forget those apples again, I’m reporting you to the ASPCA. Tie a string around your wrist or somethin’. It just ain’t right.

I’m watching you. glaring expression

10

Hay, hay, he got his apple! Stop glaring at me like that!

No, really, he did.

11

Animals amaze me sometimes. Some are pretty intelligent, pigs supposedly, dolphins for sure, cats are smart with really strong personalities, dogs are just… stupid, simple. :stuck_out_tongue: Not sure where horses fall. But every one of them, they seem capable of real interaction with humans. Real understanding of a sort. More than just routine, rote actions. I think we egocentric humans give them too little credit.

12

You’ll be on Animal Cops next.

StG

13

Ben is absolutely beautiful! It’s nice to know that other ponies act silly (or act like starving Ethiopian ponies when their treats aren’t available). The other day I was at the barn and the ponies were positive that I still had carrots. They must be hiding under my blanket! Yes! Let’s lift up the blanket! They were so careful that it was adorable. They were actually gentler than humans who know that they have to be careful. Unfortunately, once they discerned that the carrots were really and truly gone, back they went to the grass.

I’m glad Ben got his apple, you seem like a super horse … hmm owner? … I never know what word to use (and I think my ponies might remove my face if I referred to myself as their owner).

Does Ben get other kinds of treats? Studmuffins are a favorite special treat with the ponies I know.

14

If the quirkiest thing about your horse is a tendency to grump when his apple doesn’t show up, you got it good.
My mum’s horse hated mice rustling in his bedding, so he’d stomp them. I’ve sat quietly and watched him flap his ears back and forth and move his head to figure out exactly where the rustly rodent was and then BLAM! one flat mouse. The record was four in one night. Four little flat ruptured mice which had to be forked out along with the usual stuff. That’s not good for a small child to see early in the morning. He was also best friends with my a rabbit, which was kinda odd.
Ben looks very nice - does he have any such little quirks or is he a sensible horse?

Speaking of horsey treats, I was wearing my sisters waxed jacket one time at the riding stable where she had a part-time job. The pockets were always full of pony nuts, so after leading my pony into it’s stall and sorting him out, I gave him a handful as a treat. As he lipped them off my hand I spotted a flash of white and belatedly registered a small rounded object I had felt in among the nuts. I checked the pocket while Buster thoughtfully masticated his treat and yes, it seemed I had indeed just fed him a tampon. No harm no foul, (apart from Buster going :dubious: at me) but I was always a bit more careful with the contents of my sisters pockets after that.

15

Ben is indeed a nice guy, quite affectionate, easy to get along with, and very fond of children. He isn’t even bothered when one of our guineafowl fly right under his nose. He has a sweet, mild, eager-to-please disposition.

My dear departed Quarter Horse, Nick, had his share of quirks, among which was a hatred of dogs. His breeder had Australian Shepherds which thought it great fun to leap up and nip at the horses’ faces. He didn’t find it amusing. I have seen him stalk, then charge a Doberman Pinscher, chasing it out of the ring he was turned out in and darn near catching it. I saw him actually trample over a small dog once, that had wandered into his paddock. I spotted the dog, began to yell a warning to its owner, and watched horrified as Nick trotted right over the poor thing, which escaped with bruises, strains, and a newfound respect for hooves.

Nick’s quirks weren’t all bad, though. He was passionately fond of having his belly scratched – exactly at the midline, exactly behind where the girth fell, mind you! – and would sling his flank at you to demand it. He found it great good fun to seize a jacket zipper in his teeth and run it up and down. Offered a carrot, he would set his front teeth about two inches from the end and wait for you to snap the bite-sized piece off for him. He was opinionated and expressive, sometimes grumpy but touchingly sure that people adored him.

Which they did. Anyone could ride him. Everyone fell in love with him. He gave good riders a good time, he coddled frightened riders, and he carried small children like precious jewels. Not a day went by that he didn’t make me laugh. You could clip a couple of lead ropes to his halter, hop on, and have a ball, (as I did on our last ride, two months before his death at age 23).

16

Catching up with other comments:

Hal Briston, are you into pigs now? :wink: Ben’s certainly a hay hog, with Hoover-like ability to inhale mass quantities of the stuff, then piteously insist he hasn’t been fed – “No, really, they forgot me! Feed me!”

Barrels, do you ride a QH, Paint, or Appy around the barrels? Yeh, we’re bad people for laughing, but doggone it, it’s funny to see them react to getting zapped.

Athena, my cats have the same ferocious sense of entitlement – mom comes home, mom feeds cats. This is an immutable truth in their eyes.

Maddy, mare face? Oh hohohoho, oh, yeh! Geldings can do it too. Though I admit mares take it to heights the boys can only dream of.

if6was9, some folks think horses are stupid, some consider them smart. I’ve known some very dumb horses and some that were way too clever for my own good. As an old horseman once put it, “Horses know what they know.” They have tenacious memories for things that matter to them, and they’re always observing and learning – though sometimes the lessons aren’t what the humans think they’re teaching.

thursday next, I guess “owner” is the word to use with the world at large, although “devoted servant” is a lot closer, I suspect, to how they regard us.

Yeh, they’re a lot of work, a financial drain, sometimes maddening; they rip your heart to shreds when they die – but there’s no finer view of the world than through the ears of a good horse.

17

:frowning: sniff I miss my horses.

18

When I’ve taken lessons in the past, it hasn’t taken long to establish that I am the girl with peppermints. And then when I forget them, they get upset. They sniff me all up and down, looking, hoping, for a hit of peppermint scent. And then they get annoyed.

19

sniff Me too.

Thanks EddyTeddy for the pics of Nick, they made me think of my first horse, Chief, who was a quarter horse too.