Catch me if you can! Learn your lesson, human!

Feeding in the morning as usual, they were already waiting in the shed.

However, when I went to fetch 'Mr F' in the early evening for feeding, he ran off. I mean he cantered off to the far side of the field.  I was in shock - this was very unlike him. 'Mr F' was always fine with being fetched and I usually didn't have to bother as he came to me.

Needless to say that I was perplexed, to say the least! I pretended to do something else in the field, slowly closing in and moving away again. I knew that 'Mr F' was watching my every move. He KNEW what I wanted, he just knew!

Each time I got a little closer, he would move away and then began herding the others around in what seemed to be anger. He wanted to get away from me and he wasn't going to go alone.

I attempted to get close several times. No matter how sneaky I tried to be, 'Mr F' wasn't having any of it!

The other two horses - 'Luke' and 'Madame' - eventually had enough and were quite confused. They came to me and stood right next to me from now on as if to say: 'Come on, sort it out, whatever it is! He is annoying us.'

'Mr F' meanwhile remained in the distance, eyeying me up. 

Admittedly, I now took it personal. Adding to that, I was running out of time as I had to be somewhere. Frustration, pride and lack of time is never a good combination - oh I am learning this so many times!

I KNEW this situation required much more time than I had and I was dithering between just leaving him be and to try again next day. But, and here comes the pride, I didn't want to give in.

Somehow I felt I was being tested. Something was going on but what the heck was it!

As 'Mr F' refused to get even remotely close to me I resorted to what I really don't like doing: I went to fetch the food bucket as a bribe!  The other horses know by now not to come near me when I have food, unless I ask, I am glad for that because it was the only way to get 'Mr F' out the field into the stable.

There was a lot of huffing and puffing for a while and 'Mr F' kept looking towards the 'exit'.  

And here again, just to show my sheer ignorance and somewhat pride 'You don't tell me how things are done around here!'  I decided it would NOW be a good idea to do a round of 'groundwork' with that flag, just so I could make clear who was calling the shots. 

I fell into the 'I will dominate' trap - the one thing I always hated seeing others do! But I made it worse because I did it out of frustration and quite frankly, anger! Occupied with these feelings I of course FORGOT all about the timing, didn't pay attention to the horse and made a right mess out of it.

The result was a complete meltdown of communication!

'Mr F' just stood there, all fours firmly planted on the ground, he could have been a tree for all it mattered!

Oh I knew that face well by now and it said, plain and frank: 'Oh just bugger off and let me get back into the field! You are not listening and I have enough of you!'  The more I tried to make him move, the worse it got and I had ran out of time.

I gave 'Mr F' his feed, picked out his hooves (no problem there, he politely offered me each) and then let him back out to the others.

Whatever it was that went wrong between us, I didn't know what it was.

Was there something on that saturday ride that I didn't realise?

Was he in some kind of pain? He did stumble once on that Saturday ride.

How did I make him not trust me all of a sudden?

I looked in all the wrong places ...