Cody Chronicles: Be Careful What You Ask For

Cody is a wonderful horse. He’s the kind most people want—easy going, friendly, a little on the lazy side. Plus, he’s mighty pretty to look at. His bald white face holds one striking ice blue eye and one deep brown eye. The brown eye I call his kind eye. The blue eye is beautiful, but freaky. Horses just aren’t supposed to have blue eyes.

Cody pretty much gets away with everything because he flies just under my radar.
Working full time and owning four horses makes me feel like I’m a mom with too many kids! At some point, I just don’t have the energy to care about every little thing they do—I’m just trying to make it through the day!

While Cody is a good horse, especially for me, I recognize that there is room for improvement, so Cody is the lucky horse that I resolved to “brush up” this summer.
His list of character defects include:
• behaving like a two-year old child when asked to stand in one place
• refusing to back out of the trailer; he must turn around and come out facing the front
• recognizing me as his leader and learning to show me respect

On the latter, just because a horse is well behaved and not causing trouble does not mean he is respectful of you. There is a difference—like the difference between a child saying “yes ma’am” and “yeah…gimme a sec.”

In comes JR, an all-around cowboy who specializes in helping people with horse issues of all types. After two sessions with me he stated, “The main thing you need to really work on is RELAXING and STAYING CALM.” Intuitive! If you know me very well at all, you probably think it’s quite humorous that I paid someone to tell me that. Everyone knows I am high-strung, wound pretty tight, and that I tend to overreact most of the time.

Okay. Relax and stay calm. JR is right. I need to work on this. People take medication for this. Now, just how am I supposed to relax and be calm when I’m sitting on a 1200-pound beast that can inflict a lot of pain upon me? I’m not sure where to start with this, but I’ll let you know how it goes.