A Walk on the Wild Side

Most of the time Bridget is her usual 50% Arab, 50% whatever-it-is self. Yesterday, however, she manifested 110% Arabian for a little while - the glamor and drama quotient skyrocketed, and a new name for her appeared in the periphery of my mind, but I couldn't catch it.

After I let the horses onto the lawn, Bridget walked to where the gates formed an overlapping barrier across the driveway and gazed, longingly I thought, at the great world beyond.

So - I fetched the halter and invited her to come with me for a walk. She set off, wide-eyed, down the drive - no thoughts for the folks back home, all her attention focussed on what was Out There.

We walked and jogged together, stopping periodically for Bridget to assess various strange happenings in the distance - a truck pulling a trailer loaded with round bales, and other phenomena visible only to her keen senses. Whenever she was ready to move forward, she would relax her neck and back, drop her head toward me, and off we'd go again.

A few hundred yards down the road, there is a choice - go straight, turn right onto the farm lane, or go home. Bridget unhesitatingly chose the farm lane. She walked forward keenly, and then she saw THEM. The Holsteins.

Consumed with intense interest and excitement on seeing such strange beasts, she wanted to keep going towards them, a few steps at a time. After a few minutes of this, I asked her if she wanted to go home.

As soon as we turned around and were headed back, her pent-up emotion burst forth, and - behold! - there was the new Bridget. Flaring nostrils, snorting, tail high, passage-ing in circles around me. I couldn't help smiling. I was reminded why I like Arabs so much - all that fizz and fire, but - somehow - contained. Because despite the turbo-charged display, Bridget was very much still connected to me - she came close to running into me a couple of times, but a raised hand deflected her, and I didn't feel she was about to take off or lose her mind.

We proceeded thus up the lane toward the corner of the road, where one of the round bale trucks was returning, having deposited its load. I lead Bridget onto the grass as the truck and trailer turned onto the lane towards us. She almost became airborne, but again I had no sense that she was in danger of trying to take off or break away from me.

As we continued along the last stretch toward home, Bridget kept getting ahead of me, and I kept reminding her to stay beside me. When we reached our driveway, George was waiting at the fence, where he and Bridget greeted each other as if she'd been in Australia for fifteen years. Back inside the gate, I let Bridget go - she chased Chloe very officiously, then attached herself to Rose, and seemed to breathe a big sigh of relief.

That's enough of being a grown-up for one day.