Just One of Those Days

"Let's go play on the trail course," Tiffany said.

"It will be fun," Tiffany said.

HA!

Ever have one of those days where everything goes wrong? Not big things like car accidents and grease fires, but little things like closing your coat in the door and hitting every red light.

Today was one of those days.

Last week, one of my favorite riding buddies Tiffany asked me to join her at a the Oregon Horse Center to play on their mountain trail course. I haven't worked with Madge in ages, so I eagerly took her up on the offer.

Cut to today. I headed off to the barn to hook up the trailer and get Madge. The first thing I noticed was that the stool/tool box I use for my trailer's tack room was under the corner of the trailer. This is not normally an issue, but it's been raining, and the trailer had sank a few inches due to the saturated ground. The stool was stuck. After a few rescue attempts, I had to resort to the inevitable—I drove over the damn thing and picked up the pieces.

Note to Travis: Please add a new trailer step to my Christmas list.

Then, I drove down to load Madge. I was happy to see that she was waiting by the gate, which was surrounded by fine mud. As I was looking for the best way to get to her without sinking to my ankles, I looked up to see that I had a bigger problem. Madge had rolled in the mud and was now covered from tip to tail on her left side. It was still fresh and drippy. Yay! Thankfully, she stuck her head out the gate so I was able to carefully slip her halter on without making a complete mess of myself.

And, we're off!

When we arrived at the horse center, my first stop was the wash rack. I hosed Madge down, blanket and all. Well, only the side that was dirty. This time I was glad the mud was still fresh, cause it hosed right off.

After her mini-bath, Madge quietly loaded back in the trailer, and we headed to a parking spot. It was a 30-second drive. She couldn't get up to much trouble in 30 seconds, right? Wrong. Reaching to unclip her halter, I looked up to see that the entire inside of the trailer was splattered with mud. "Really," I asked Madge. "You just had to shake like a dog?"

With a chuckle, I removed Madge's blanket and led her to the arena. Madge has been in the arena with the mountain trail obstacles many times in the past. That said, it's been almost a year since our last visit, so I was prepared for the unexpected.

We walked down the center of the arena and headed over to the cow hides. She wasn't happy about the hides, but it only took a few gentle tugs to get her to cross them.

We wandered through a ditch. Easy. We crossed bridges. Piece of cake. We headed to the water box. "We could do this in our sleep," I thought. Madge had other ideas. Despite having traversed water boxes on many occasions, today she wouldn't have anything to do with it.

"Hey, Tiffany," I hollered. "The princess who rolled in the mud earlier suddenly doesn't want to get her feet wet!"

There we stood. Me holding my ground, Madge holding hers. "Take you time," I told Madge. "I can wait all night."

And wait, I could. Whenever I'm faced with a challenge like this, I'm thankful for the time I helped get a horse into the water at a clinic. It took one and a half hours for three of us, under the direction of my trainer, to coax the horse into the water. It was a proud moment, and it truly taught me the importance of patience when training on obstacles.

The big difference here is that the horse at the clinic was scared. Madge simply didn't feel like it. She would get no sympathy from me. I worked with Madge for a while, then asked Tiffany if she could drive her from behind to help speed things up. Tiffany made a wall with her horse, and I pressured Madge from the front. We eventually convinced Madge that she was better off to cross the box if she wanted to move on. Then we made her do it two more times.

I can't say I was excited to spend so much time working on an obstacle that we'd done many times, but I was quite happy with the lesson. It took 20 minutes to get that silly girl across the box. We knew she was just testing us, so we pushed hard, but she remained calm the entire time. Not once did she buck, rear, kick or try to knock me down. She simply wanted to take the easy—and dry—way out. I couldn't have asked for a better mule. Madge may get a little ornery at times, but she keeps her head about her. She's going to be a great, safe riding mule, just like my dear Maxine (only without the attitude).

Madge was fabulous for the rest of our time on the course. Maybe she was tired, or maybe knew she'd been had. Either way, my day was finally looking up, and we ended up having a lot of fun.