Hamster Brainitis

I dashed out to the barn on Saturday night in between thunderstorms to take Cisco for a spin.

He is generally very even-tempered, and when he has had 4 or 5 days off between rides (or more) he might be slightly perky for the first few minutes under saddle, but that's it. Nothing to worry about. The hamster is happily curled up and asleep.

Not that night though. The hamster was on its wheel and running.

Maybe he didn't like his no bangs look?

I don't know what started it. He was normal in the barn to start with. Another horse was getting tacked up, and since one of the zipper tabs on my half chaps decided to snap completely off I was slow in getting him ready. That horse left, and Cisco started his idiot dance.

Let me stress - this is his version of Hamster Brainitis. Which is probably about a 3 out of 10 on the Hamster Brain scale. It consists mostly of being distracted and not standing still, getting pushy with his nose, barging with his shoulders, and turning into a giraffe. He's only 14.3 hh, but anything taller than a llama is too tall for me to be able to work with. Everything is mostly annoying and predictable, but not at all dangerous.

No one looks good with a poofy combover.

He was a turd to bridle. Wouldn't open his mouth, and then he'd flip his nose up or into me. There may have been a couple of open-handed whacks against the side of his mouth (which honestly have been a long time coming for that behaviour).

Then he wouldn't stand still in the arena to get ready, and it took a couple of minutes before he stood enough for me to get on. At which point he walked away and was a turd about halting.

I knew I was on a bit of a ticking timebomb as we walked around, looking for something to spook at. But he did keep it together to mostly walk, allthough there was a lot of sarcastic walk happening.

I figured that I would pick up a trot and then decide if I would ride it out or hop off, strip off his tack and let him loose to have a run. We did two big circles of a llama impersonation.

via GIPHY

It was the trot version of this. 

I hopped off and let him loose.

And he ran. A bunch. With little incentive from me.

I know I could have ridden it out. But why pick an inevitable fight when I didn't have to?

He had fun continuously playing for a few minutes. After which he looked properly chastised. My mellow pony was back.

Hopefully that will last him for a while. Although the melty heat that we're supposed to get for most of this week will likely help keep the energy levels down.

Now I just have to figure out how to fix the zipper of my half-chap!