that's what happens to bad ponies!

Yesterday I had Lucy on the crossties to groom her and clean her mane up.

You see, I had done a horrible chop-shop job cutting her mane earlier in the week, and each day when I saw her I was like, "Yikes, I can't believe I did that to my horse", so I knew I had to clean it up.

She stood there while I combed her mane out, and then I took hold of the first section. Normally, she is excellent to get her mane pulled. She stands there and doesn't fuss at all. Yesterday, though, she was having no part of it. I pulled the first piece out, and she was fine. Then I took the second piece and went to pull it and she tossed her head a bit. I pulled the third piece and she sat back, broke the left crosstie just for the heck of it, and then got a very big surprise when the metal piece on the end of the crosstie shot across the aisle and hit her, somehow missing me even though I was standing right there. It all happened so quickly; I couldn't have punished her with timing any better than that. It was like she touched an oven and got burned. The look on her face was so funny, I cannot even tell you how much I wanted to laugh at her, but she was so stunned that she stood like a statue for the rest of the grooming session. I pulled her mane and made it look a little better, brushed her, and just fussed over her in general. She did not budge one inch!

I didn't even bother removing the broken crosstie.

Maybe she learned a lesson from this, probably not ;)