I know. Two posts in two days. But I’m just so excited I can’t even handle life right now.
For those of you who know me, and Willow, or have followed the blog for a while, you know that the biggest thing that Willow and I struggle with is her separation anxiety when it comes to leaving her herdmates. In the past, she’s had moments where she’s tried to climb over her stall door (and me!) to get back out to her friends. Honestly, I’ve just been working around it since it’s such a point of stress for both of us.
She’s been getting better as time goes on, and little by little been getting comfortable with at least coming into the barn solo. There was always a friend once she got up there but she would still stare out the back of the barn and let loose the occasional bellow into my ear.
We have a busy week coming up, and I wanted to steal some time today to get out and give her a bit of a spa treatment so she stepped off the trailer looking like the diva she knows that she is. I also really hate untidy manes. Like really, really bad. I put on my big girl panties, grabbed the stud chain (because everybody keeps and extra lead rope and chain in their glove compartment, right?) out of the truck upon arrival and prepared myself for battle.
Turns out, homeslice was totally cool with the proceedings. The barn owner had rigged up some sort of weird pasture system, and I didn’t realize that there were horses out where I had to walk Wills through to get to the barn. They came screaming over and I almost had a heart attack. Willow’s reaction? “Eh, I’ll back ‘em off Mom. No worries.” She pinned her ears, gave a tail swish, and everybody went back to their grazing.
Then, it was bath time. The other dreaded chore. She will do the ants in her pants dance the entire time, and bathing usually involves going around and around and around in circles, getting tangled up in the hose, and lots of “just freaking stand, damnit!”. Not today! Ms. Thang stood like a rock.
Just like that. The entire time. WHAT?!
Then, just because, the Army (I board her right off post, about 5 miles) started off with the heavy artillery. You can feel the thumps in your chest. Then, as if that wasn’t enough… they decided to do a few fly overs with the big planes. I figured, here’s where it’s all going to go down. I’m going to have to call Mike and tell him to come pick up the pieces because no way is she going to chill. I mean, this is Willow we’re talking about here.
What was her reaction?
She took a snooze.
Umm…
WHAT?!
She got lavished in peppermints and we went and found the yummy grass for her to eat while she dried off.
I’m still a little bit floored by how wonderful she really was today. We had not one moment of hysterics, or drama, or naughtiness. She followed me around like a puppy dog, ‘helped’ load stuff into the truck, and was really just a good buddy for the few hours that I was able to sneak out there. And she was up there with me all alone, no friends in sight!
Are we finally turning the corner to a sensible, happy to comply Willow? Or are we dealing with the onset of the zombie apocalypse (<- that word was REALLY hard for me to spell…)? Maybe she’s just decided that I make a good friend? Who knows! It’s nothing I did, I don’t think, training wise… *sniff* my big/little girl is really growing up!
And it was really worth the wait!
I’m off to shower, then we have to hit up the tack store (oh darn!) since I somehow manage to have 3 track bandages but 5 quilts, and then we have the pre-closing walk through of our new house!! Hope you all have as great of a day as we did!