Saturday, July 23, 2011

Riley's room with a view

Riley, Harv, and most of the other horses at the barn have a window to the outside, louvered glass protected by metal bars on the inside. The barn is many years old, and no horse has disturbed the windows. Till Ri-Ri.

A few weeks ago I noticed one of the louvered pieces was missing from Ri's window. Odd, I thought, till I found the broken piece outside the barn under the window. Ri can, and does, poke his nose through the bars. Wonderful.

Week two. Louvered piece number two breaks. Now it is easy for Ri to get his entire nose under the remaininging strips of glass. I'm mucking and make a note to remove the remaining glass pieces which are beveled but still sharp on the edges. I move to the next stall and as I go out to dump the barrel a half hour later, Riley reaches out over his dutch door to nudge me -- a swath of hair is scraped off his nose to the pink skin. Louver #3 is missing. presumed to be lying broken outside the barn.

I remove the remaining pieces and hide them (there is NO good place to store glass pieces at a barn). It was great fun to inform the barn handyman--who has just installed a length of wood along the top of Riley's stall to prevent him from harassing horses in the cross ties--of Riley's new behavior.

I offered to pay for the damage. No one has taken me up on it so far.

Riley needs a hobby.


5 comments:

  1. He HAS a hobby--interior decorating. At least he's mastered the demolition phase. What he needs is a fabric swatch selection book so he can design the window treatments. *LOL*

    ReplyDelete
  2. Riley needs pasture board. :) With a run-in and lots of room, and maybe a spunky pony who will play but not get either bossed or too rough.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Riley needs more turnout...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Try one of those hanging treat balls.... we put them in the horse trailer for long trips and the horses were obsessed with them to the point where they were actually excited to get in the trailer!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sounds like Riley wants a room with a panoramic view.

    ReplyDelete

Hi Guys, Your comments are valued and appreciated -- until recently I never rejected a post. Please note that I reserve the right to reject an anonymous post.