It's Not Fair

Today, Monkey managed to frustrate me to no end. First, he turned his stall into a swamp, to such an extent that he is now temporarily dwelling in another stall, because his has the mats pulled back, so that the realistic impressions of three great lakes underneath the rubber mats can dry out.

Then, he was a complete jerkoff in class, but that was partly my fault. I didn't put in the extra thirty minutes minimum riding today, because I was waiting for UPS to deliver the books that I had ordered. Still, it was frustrating. He was screwing up things that he knows, which drives me insane when I'm doing everything I can to reward good behavior and correct the bad that he keeps coming up with.

But the worst part of all of it? After being a total butt in class, fighting and behaving badly enough that I had to get harsh with him with the end of the reins, just to keep him from causing someone else an injury, when I finally got enough of a good point out of him to stop, when I got off of him at the barn, he immediately turned his head to me and gave me that big brown eye, with that loving look in it. You horse folks know the one, it's not the one you get when you're holding grain, its the one you get when your buddy comes up to you in the pasture so you can scratch the itchy spots. And he cuddled his head into my chest and relaxed all over.

It's just not fair that he can do that. It's an unfair advantage, in the worst way.