I was being silly. I’m sorry. It’s been a long day. I am a horse person and definitely not a cat.
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Thanks!
Sure, I could move on but it’s a complicated story that is not easy to move on from. I’d hope that COTHers could understand this but apparrently not. I loved the constructive advice, did not love the unconstructive advice. The advice that did not apply was just…BS. There are COTHers who just feel happy arguing with someone rather than providing actual advice given the facts. One always has to consider who is replying and if they have something good to offer.
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Well, since you don’t know who is replying - we’re all just behind keyboards - I’d not take anything personally. People are generally trying to give you the advice you asked for. That you don’t like it does not determine whether advice is constructive. People have given you very sound ideas, paths forward, ways to avoid the same happening again, alternative views of why it happened … all potentially helpful depending on how you look at the problem. It’s your choice whether to take the advice. But one thing is certain - doing nothing aside from casting blame and getting angry will not prevent the events from happening again.
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My take on this, FWIW, is that people will take things mostly as they are described. But we all have our color - our experiences - that can easily twist things. We see things through different lenses. Forums are hard that way. Heck, life is hard that way. But forums are particularly hard because of the written nature of things and the fact that threads wander a bit and it is easy to make attribution errors.
And from experience sitting in your shoes, it’s hard not to say “hey wait, that’s not what I meant”. But it also doesn’t help.
It’s the nature of the particular beast…but this forum has been historically one of the finest, in part because of it. So we take the good with the bad, and try to be careful when we word things to the degree that we can 
I raise a glass to you and your horse, and hope for no more shocking in the future. Not sarcastic - that sh*t hurts!
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People have given me great ideas! Don’t get me wrong! I’ve loved them! I’ve acted upon them!
And people have given BS ideas based on the facts I provided. I appreciate your responses…
Thanks! Great points! Thank you.
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Tell it to the judge! 
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That’s exactly the video I was thinking of!!!
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You could ask yourself to leave 
What’s the saying:
Yes, I live in my own little world, but they know me here. 
I reached over a hot wire to pet a friend’s inquisitive yearling & we both got zapped.
That horse gave me stinkeye well.into his 2nd year 
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You know the COTH Mandate:
Photos, or it didn’t happen!
To you I say PSS, PSS, PSS 
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Ooh. I wonder if I’d go? Might need a strongly worded letter lol
More fun with electricity…
Without even thinking about it, I plugged in a bug zapper 10’ from the barn this summer, trying to eliminate some of the pests that the horses were complaining about.
That went well. :rolleyes:
I shocked no one, it was merely the sound that flipped them all out. Dang bug zapper was effective at killing bugs but apparently now I have to put it out of equine hearing range, lest they think I’m trying to light saber them out of existence.
4 days it took them to get over that one and the bug zapper was on for mayyyybe a minute? Only long enough for me to notice that they were losing their flipping minds.
We humans repeatedly make well-meaning decisions that backfire on us. Not that horses aren’t prone to the same errors.
I still think I need to plug it back in to desensitize them a little, as dying because someone can’t handle a little shock or even the sound of it is not my jam.
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I took a hairdryer to my barn because, in the godawful Deepfreeze we’ve had this week, my hydrant (inside the barn) was acting like it might freeze 
Turned it on the hydrant’s handle & my Hackney Pony had apoplexy. A good 20’ away from the hydrant, behind the safety of his stall door, open to outdoors so he had an Escape route…
Instead he danced inside the stall The Sky is Falling!!!
The other 2 - horse & mini - were Meh.
Horses!
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Dying 
. In their defense, we have some nice light sabers at home and igniting one sends the dogs into a FRENZY.
My horses? The leaf blower in the aisle or around the barn is fine. In fact the mini appreciates having hay scraps blown into her pen and will just stand there getting blasted in the face. A vacuum, though? The world is ending. It’s ending right now. I am actively trying to kill them by turning it on.
Horses
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You don’t like the feedback you received!
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We’ve got a saddlebred like that. My big young goofball will be panicking and flamenco dancing because he wants out because everyone else is out, but won’t let you get him out and just keeps spinning around in circles, and when you finally get him to get him out, he wants to turn around and go right back in. And when he’s excitable after several days of deep freeze having to be in 99% of the time because I can’t keep enough hot water outside…that flamenco dancing gets very exciting.
I love horses. I really do. They are awesome.
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I thought about this thread while I was swapping blankets last night on my crew. I always do blankets (if needed) during meals - gasp! - and never halter a horse unless I need to, which is extremely rare for anything over about 8 months old. It has been very cold lately, so I was bundled up and less coordinated than usual. Things that happened on this one day include:
- I somehow managed to loop an elastic leg strap around one of my mud boots while trying to toss a blanket onto my coming 2 year old
- I repeatedly got my gloves stuck in the velcro on my horses’ neck covers
- I had to get down on my knees to reach under my pregnant 6 year old because her belly has become too wide for my 5’1" self to reach under to grab the surcingle
We all lived. None of my girls even blinked at my shenanigans. Why? Because they are sane, kind, and cooperative. Honestly, I don’t care to own a horse I need to tiptoe around in order to accomplish basic daily tasks. Life is short enough and dangerous enough as it is - why make it worse?
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I don’t like the non-factual responses I’ve received. It’s pretty simple.
I blanketed my horse in the dark tonight after riding. Literally throwing the blanket haphazardly over his body. Not getting it right. He was just fine as I bumbled about because he’s been blanketed his whole life.
@J-Lu. No offense. But you’re being unrealistic. My show hunter is a giant puppy dog. A golden retriever in a horse suit. I’ve blanketed him myself for almost a decade and had him in boarding situations where novices have blanketed and un blanketed him. One single time free in a small pen he spooked and bolted. I was removing his blanket. Shit happens. The fact you think your prey animal has more reason than a human being is telling.
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Sure, I get that! 100%
The whole argument here is that an unknowledgeable person was dealing with his blanket. He ran into the electric wire. What are the odds of “shit happens” vs “non-horseperson blanketer”? AGAIN, I’ll mention that he’s never had a problem his WHOLE LIFE being blanketed by people who knew what they were doing (not so much my people who didn’t know what they were doing) He was imported as a yearling and always has been blanketed. It comes down to simple horsemanship.
