An Unstoppable Passaging Asshole

For the last two days my horse has been replaced with a giant asshole. That may not be entirely politically correct, but it's certainly very accurate. 

Today makes yesterday look good, so I'll go into detail about what I had to go through this morning.

I rode him fairly hard (harder than I thought I would with him being on rehab, the damn horse) last night due to behavior problems. When I got to him this morning, I was expecting to have a really fun ride on him with him being nice and quiet. I was wrong.

I'm speculating here, but it seems that Rico finally mustered up the courage to ask his neighbor out on a date and she rejected him, leaving him to obsess over her during all moments of the day (this is my most entertaining guess as to why I had such weird behavior out of him today). I got there and he had stopped eating his breakfast to stare at her. I said hi and he visited with me for a second, then stared at her. He stared at her the whole time I tacked him up and was reluctant to leave his stall because he couldn't stare at her while walking away, not without trying though. 

"Hey friend, look over here! Look over here!"

"Oh hey mom, have you met my neighbor who I just realized
exists and am now obsessed with?"

When I got on him, he dragged me to her stall and stared at her. I tried to turn him around and he threatened to rear so I kicked him and took him away from her. Once he was convinced that I wasn't going to let him back to his stall and that we were, indeed, going to be walking away from her, he lost his ever loving mind. 

This is very weird behavior out of Rico. My horse is LAZY and doesn't give a shit about anything, including my aids at times. Other horses will gallop around and there's Rico, just staring at them. Other horses will find something VERY SCARY and there's Rico, ignoring it and instead spooking at a leaf blowing across the road. The horse is not the sort of animal that loses his mind over what other horses are doing. But it was gone this morning!

I took him away from her and we walked down the road. I've ridden the last two times in the dark so today I thought he'd be excited to go on an adventure. He pranced the whole time.

He pranced until I got him into the arena and then he smushed himself against the rail leaning over toward her (she's a good forty yards away from the arena) while I took off my jacket. 

I then proceeded to passage my asshole around the arena. There was no trot today, there was no walk today, there was only passage. And... well... a pretty damn good one. Oh and for the first time, there were passage to piaffe transitions! And piaffe to passage transitions! And they were good! And... isn't my horse supposed to be on rehab? Yeahhhh well maybe we were both stir crazy. There was no way I was getting anything else out of him so I went with it. 

We still ended pretty early and we'll see what his leg looks like tomorrow. Based on today though, I think I can accelerate his rehab a bit, lest I fall off of my unstoppable passaging asshole. 

Little Ruby loves my boots

So freaking cute