155. Steamed

Today I lead Gus out of his paddock with good faith that we’ll play in the arena, including some running around to drain the excess energy that’s helping to make him an obnoxious punk rampant lately.  Not halfway to the arena, my faith is shattered.  Gus is an unreconstructed evildoer: again he drags me onto his grazing patch and won't budge.

The first couple of times this happened, I granted him his grazing rights.  I rolled with his moods and acceded to his desires.  I retained my patience, aplomb, and bonhomie.  Well, not today.  Today his snotty behavior instantly forces steam from my ears.  Even though he’s wearing a tough nylon blanket, I wallop him over the back with the tail end of the lead rope.  And I holler very bad names at him.  All of which, of course, only fuel-injects my anger and his defiance.

Before heading off to find the lunge whip, I remember to unclip his lead line for safety.  Not that he deserves any safety, I grumble to myself.  As I stalk back toward him, whip in hand, I’m grasping for any shred of positivity in this galling predicament, and I determine that I’ll still accomplish my goal of getting Gus to cover some ground and burn up energy — I’ll just do it outside rather than inside the arena.

And so the whip-waving game begins again.  Even his goat-on-a-pogo-stick canter is faster than my run, so once he leaves me in the dust, he takes a moment to stop and chomp grass, giving me a sassy side-eye as I stonily close the distance between us.  He really doesn’t care if the whip slaps his hind end, so he grabs one last mouthful before he picks up and flees just an inch before the lash might reach him.  

In a useless bid for intimidation, I smack the whip against inanimate objects that might make a loud crack.  My eye glints as I trundle past a bare picnic table, and I snap the whip down on it hard.  It gives a gratifying bang, but then I’m instantly jerked up short as the lash, caught in a knothole of the tabletop, suddenly drags me back around.  By the time I extricate the freakin’ thing, Gus is way down the path and chowing leisurely.  Dammit!  Let me tell you, it’s not easy to laugh and fume and run all at the same time.

After 20 minutes of racewalking and jogging, and dropping the whip once when I turn my ankle, and other Keystone Koppery on both our parts, I finally manage to approach Gus, hold the whip behind him as just an ushering tool, and direct his head toward his own paddock gate — which I had cunningly set ajar during one of the several times we’d racketed past it.  Clang!  Whew!  He’s corralled again, and I can go home.  Indeed you could say that my huff arrived and I left in it.

Thanks, dear reader, for allowing me to vent here.  My fury has now ebbed, all the cut-up carrot and apple bits that I never got to treat Gus with are now in a baggie, and the prospect of using them on my next visit seems almost . . . promising.  Still, just in case he frustrates me again with flaming assholery, maybe I’ll also bring a large gun.