Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Couch of Death

Maddy and I went on another trail ride today.

Let me pause to recognize a growing trend: newfound confidence on trails = NO MORE RING WORK. Both Lucy and I are happy with this change.

Ok, back to the story.

So we were out traipsing around the woods when we came across a couch. On the side of the trail. In the woods. In the middle of winter. In New England.

Um, weird.

This couch has been there for a month or two but this was the first time Lucy and the roly poly Arab Pretty had seen it. Both horses were beside themselves with fear and each exhibited not-fun reactions, like blowing up backwards, spooking repeatedly, snorting, and generally acting like asses about it.

(For the record, the first time Cairo and I walked past it on a hike, she was like, Huh, there's a couch. Carry on!)

Neither of us could get our horses up close to this thing so Maddy hopped off and lead Pretty up to the couch.




After a minute or so, Pretty seemed to accept the couch so I tried to get Lucy to walk up to it. She carried on being an ass so I also hopped off and lead her up to it. She really, really did not want to get close to this couch but I persuaded her that it wasn't bad, and this is how I did it:



Classy!

Then I put a cookie on the couch and made her eat the cookie off the couch. Obviously, a cookie dispensing couch can't be all THAT evil.


"right there! do you see it?"

after much deliberation, she ate the cookie
This was a day none of us will forget!

12 comments:

  1. So cute, my ottb mare learned what a green plastic chair was yesterday:)

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  2. It's amazing what people can drag out to the woods. Lucy is adorable, glad she got over her fear of it. And I noticed I spelt her name as Lucky in my last comment...I do that everytime and I have no idea why...

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  3. Well there you have the difference between a prey animal and a predator. :P.

    I too HATE ring work. (notice I never blog about that? It's cause we never do it anymore! Lol). Trail riding is so much fun and fulfilling.

    I love your trails! They're gonna look a lot different after tomorrow......it's already snowing here.

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  4. Hilarious! Don't you love how horses will casually look at deer bolting through the woods and then completely loose it when they see an inanimate object like a couch?

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  5. Love the video, reaction sounds and looks like something my Kika would do - he expressions are priceless!
    Came across your blog thanks to Hillary & love the Shaming contest idea!
    Lucy is gorgeous - enjoy the trail rides! I cannot wait to get abck out into the woods hacking...now if only the snow & ice would sod off I could!

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  6. Why not a couch in the woods, I want to see you jumping that by the end of the summer! Lol

    Great job

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  7. Lol, how much more effort did someone have to take to dump it there instead of just finding a dumpster? Lucy did well considering the number of couch related deaths horses have ;)

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  8. I came across this couch of death encounter when it was re-posted on Horse Junkies United. I have since spent waaaay to much time reading older entries of your blog:) What a great blog- such nice writing and great photos and videos!! (Not to mention the gorgeous horse and great riding!) Looking forward to reading more!

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  9. She has the twitchiest ears I've ever seen! Love that she trusted you enough to grab the cookies, and I'm so pleased you're enjoying the trails with her.

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