Last Tuesday I was prepping my sweet little grey mare Calypso for my riding lesson. Now there’s a back story to this. About two weeks prior, I had attempted to learn how to inline skate. Suffice it to say that said attempt ended quickly as a result of two extremely hard landings on skinny butt on hard concrete. Since then those skates have been relegated to Craig’s List, and my patootie is slowly recovering. Now, fast forward to Tuesday.
One of the chores one does to prep your horse for riding is to clean the mess out of their hooves, the glop and dirt they pick up from being in their stalls or the corral. So you must work your way around the animal and pick up the hooves one by one and pick this mess out. I was dutifully doing this until I got to Calypso’s rear end. Then she started to balk. It was painful for me to lean over (a leftover from my aborted skating career). She’d dance away every time I went for her hoof. Bend. Dance. Ouch. Bend. Dance. Ouch. Three times. I popped her on the butt in frustration. Not hard. But enough to get her attention.
She leapt away from my hand and gave me that hurt LOOK. I have never popped Calypso. Ours is a most affectionate and loving relationship, made up of kisses and nuzzles and many handfuls of soft green grass. She was not happy with me.
However she did offer up her left back leg without protest so I leaned over and got to work.
Seconds later I felt, and smelled, a copious amount of reeking green wet material landing on my bare left shoulder, over my arm, onto my wrist, watch, fingers, leg, boots.
I started laughing helplessly. Looked over my right shoulder. Calypso was looking right back. “Got the message, cowgirl?”
I kept right on cleaning her foot. No water anywhere close by. I’d stink to high heaven my entire lesson.
Put her foot down gently. Eased up and walked to her head. We eyeballed each other. I reached up and nabbed her ears, and scratched them. Rubbed that sweet spot right over her eyes and then rubbed her eyes gently shut. Scrubbed her cheeks under the halter. She placed her muzzle into my chest and rested it there, then pushed me. “You’re forgiven.”
She gave me a lovely ride that day.
Her eloquent green WordFood was a fine reminder that it wasn’t her fault I was sore or irritated about my back. Not her fault I was stupid enough to try to learn a sport for six year olds. I wasn’t present for her and she knew it. If I’m dumb enough to smack her and then sit in the landing zone, well then. I deserve precisely what I got.
What I loved about Calypso’s sweet lesson in humble green pie is that we don’t have the right to cascade our stuff onto innocents, be they animals, children, spouses, work partners, anyone else. It’s ours to process. Let’s be courageous enough to deal with it ourselves before we find ourselves in the loading zone.