Like a Dog, Only Bigger

It's six-thirty am and my horse is bugling at the house. I, the antithesis of a morning person, am thinking dark thoughts about glue factories and horse steaks.

Bleary-eyed, I tromp out to to the barn, where the Wonder Horse awaits, stamping, snorting, and registering his displeasure over a marginally late breakfast. I fumble around in the barn, find his fly mask and enter the paddock. Just as I finish dressing him for another fly-ridden day, I notice something black and disheveled by the fence.

He follows, clearly pleased with himself, as I investigate. The lump turns out to be the remains of a roll of landscape fabric. My neighbor had left it by the fence, and the WH yank it through and shredded it like tissue paper.

Wonder Horse, now bored, flits off, tail in the air, toward his feeder. Hint, hint, hint. I stuff the remains back under the fence and head off to get the beast his breakfast. Hey. It's not my problem. The neighbor should know better than to leave anything within WH's reach.

Non-horse people tend to think of horses as big, dull-witted, docile creatures that stand in fields, placidly munching hay. In truth, they are a lot more like destructive dogs. Twelve-hundred pound, destructive dogs.