I Had This Plan....

Three Cheers for President-Elect Barack Obama!!

The world has changed for the better!

...And Tucker Had His Plan...And.....


Tucker in Chance's stall, up from his nap

So this is how the story goes.......

OK, so I went to vote in the morning. Then about two hours later, I took my aunt to vote.

All was well, but I forgot I needed to get some alfalfa cubes for the Boys and that I had a ticket for the Election Night Supper at my church at 5 PM.

I decided between 2 and 3 that I would give Tucker a quick school and then head for the feed store kind of in the area of church. I'd pick up just one bag of cubes there for the Boys' breakfast and get more later in the week from my regular feed store--where they are better priced.

All looked well.

Until I went out to the barn to find Tucker wedged in the feed room. (I will take a picture of this space so you can see how ridiculous this is.) The room is 10' X 10' with feed bins on one side and cabinets on the other. The floor is raised about a foot and a half off the barn aisle and is 1/4" plywood. Now, Tucker has done this before, and has gone through the floor in the process, do I have 1/2" plywood laid down just in case.

But in any scenario, a 16.3h horse in such a small space is downright silly. There is a wide door that opens out to the yard, so I moved the tractor and opened the door hoping he would continue out forward to eat on the lawn.

Nope. He think's he's going to hit his head on the top of the door frame. And, if he tries to back out, he has to step down into the aisle. Since I'd left an interior stall door open as well as the feed room gate--in the morning after I'd fed DUH!!--Chance was in the barn aisle behind him and the both of them had strew debris all over making Tucker's extaction from the room even trickier.

With the front door open, I went round into the barn aisle and began tapping him with the dressage whip, hoping to encourage him to walk on out.

Nope. He turned himself around in the narrow space (5 feet???) and proceeded to come back out into the barn.

The feed room was a mess. He'd eaten the three apples I'd left there and the partial pack of carrots. And he'd been in the grain bin. Not sure how much of that he ate as it was off to his side at a very awkward angle, but I'm sure he'd been munching. And the two piles of manure he'd dropped suggested he'd been in there for a while. *sigh*

So the resulting cleanup I had to do took up all the time I'd alloted for errands. I rearranged, swept, shoveled, discarded, moved, and generally spent a good hour trying to organize things again.

I swore I was never going to leave any doors open again. Just goes to show how well I keep my promises to myself.

Below, the feed/tack room viewed from the barn aisle. You can see the door to the outside. The room is 10' wide, but with the cabinets on either side the open area is only about 5' wide. Feed bins are on the left.

Chance, napping in Toby's stall. Too cute!