Little pleasures. I spent time today trying to get some chores done and chip away at other projects (such as getting mud on the walls of my house so I don't have to burn so much wood). I was moving some horse fence panels to enlarge my young stallion Koko's pen a bit and spent as much time watching him kick up his heels and run around as I did working. The mare that lives with him quite plainly asked to be let out of the pen - she was tired of Koko, I guess. She will be 32 in the spring, and I suppose that all his antics try her patience. So I opened the gate and waved her through. Koko didn't seem to care. As I worked on the pen, I was trying to figure out where I'd feed this mare. Miss Etta gets special feed - soaked beet pulp and alfalfa/bermuda blend pellets - and although she has always been the lead mare of the herd, she's lived with Koko for over a year and I was concerned that she might have lost her status and not be able to fend off the other horses if I couldn't find a separate pen for her.

No need to worry. I had planned on just haltering her and putting her back with Koko when it came time to feed, but Miss Etta had decided on her own where she was going to eat. She had invited herself into Ben Nasrif's pen and was standing at his feeder waiting for dinner.

Sigh. Well, that pen is big enough for two horses to spend an overnight in, so I put a feed pan in Nas' pen and fed him there. By the time I had finished feeding the other horses, they'd switched feed pans and seemed happy enough.

I had spent some time talking to Kelsey in between hauling horse panels around. I asked her if I could get on her back, but she wasn't really interested - probably knew that I didn't really have time to do anything but sit there. As I was working on one of the panels, however, she came over and breathed in my ear. I stopped what I was doing and just closed my eyes, totally enjoying the whole experience - the warmth of her breath on my skin, her lips mussing my hair, the sweet smell of her - a feeling of being kissed by Kelsey.

After I finished with the pen and before feeding, I decided to work with Koko a bit. I need to trim his feet soon, so was reviewing his giving me his feet. When he realized what I was doing, he decided to paw with the foot I was asking for instead of just lifting it. He will make a game of eveyrthing if he can, and things can get out of control (witness the fact that I used to pull on his tail, and now he swings his butt around to have me do that even when I'm trying to do something else), so instead of reacting to Koko's pawing, I merely leaned lightly on his shoulder and put my hand on his forearm until he stood still again. I put my hand down to his ergot and gave a little tug - my signal to lift a foot - and waited. And waited. And waited. I sent him all sorts of messages and envisioned that foot coming, up, but I guess if I wasn't going to play Koko's game, he wasn't going to play mine. I waited some more.

After a while he decided it was OK to lift his foot, and he did so with no fuss at all. I made no comment either. Sometimes the best way to teach something is to make the request and let the student work it out.