Six Barn Pet Peeves

There are times when I’m working, often in the early morning hours when it’s 5 degrees out or late at night when everything is dark and the flood lights aren’t working, that I am tempted to scream at the top of my lungs and rip out my hair. People say that horses are smart animals. Intelligent, even. I’d like to find whoever started that rumor and beat them over the head. Since I can’t do that, here are my top six pet peeves around the barn:

1) Horses who poop their water buckets. Or their food buckets. Or out their door. I really, really hate this. Especially in the winter when the poop gets trapped under the ice or frozen to the grain tub. Not fun. In fact, it’s really gross. Now I understand if this happens on accident once or twice… but there is one horse at the barn who, on a regular basis, shits in her water bucket. She’s in a large stall. She only has one water bucket. To accomplish this, she would have to back up into it, hike herself up on her tippy toes, and aim really well. The other staff members laugh it off. I know she’s doing it to spite me.

2) When the lead ropes aren’t reattached to the halters. OK, OK, I know this sounds picky… But when I have to turn twenty horses out and every time I go to grab the halter (usually while already holding one or two horses with my other hand) and the leadrope falls on the floor because some idiot didn’t clip it back on the halter, it makes me really angry. Like, really really angry.

3) Horses that spook at things. I understand that horses spook at scary objects. But when a horse (actually, MY horse) insists on acting like the boogey man is about to jump out and scalp him alive every single frickin’ time he walks past the same white shed to go from his pasture to the barn, it really pisses me off. Every day he goes past this shed. For a year and a half he has gone past this shed. It has never bitten him. It has never attacked him. No one has ever jumped out and yelled GOTCHA! Yet every time you walk him past it you better be ready, because he will either freeze, fly back, or leap straight up in the air. Every time.

4) Lesson students who are early. I know you’re thinking it’s GOOD to be early. But parents, it is NOT OK to drop your seven year old off at the barn forty five minutes before their lesson starts and then take off, leaving me to baby-sit when I should be out getting my Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Enough said.

5) When the horses forget the routine. This really, really makes me want to grind my teeth. Every single morning, six mornings a week, I do the same thing. I feed hay in the same order, I feed grain in the same order, I turnout in the same order. I even keep the radio station the same. Yet every single morning, without fail, there are at least three or four horses who are shocked by the routine. WHAT? I can hear them say with their bugged out eyes and swinging heads. I DON’T WALK OUT WITH HIM! I’VE NEVER SEEN HIM IN MY LIFE! ATTAAAACK!

6) Carrying water out to the fields. This really only applies in the winter, but since it is a pet peeve for at least four months out of the year, I feel safe including it. The barn design sucks for water. There are no outlets. There are no heated water buckets. There are no trough defrosters. There is just me, heavy water buckets in one hand and hammer in the other, walking out to every single field every single morning to beat the crap out of the frozen ice and refill the troughs by hand. The owner bought some magical non-freezing solar troughs, but they don’t work for shit.