Poodles&Ponies: It's the Holidays...

You know you're not in the city anymore when the radio announces "The holidays are here: Deer season, Thanksgiving and Christmas!"

This was my weekend to be overwhelmed, evidently. I should have known that it was not going to be my day when, on the way to the barn - in town- there was a guy cleaning his deer on the side of the road. Nice.

I got the the barn around 10 am - early enough that few people were there, not so early as to be in the way of the stall cleaners- and got Tilly all tacked up and ready to go. As it would turn out, she'll do anything for a carrot (which is good, since she was not a fan of the peppermints, at all), so we hustled into the arena and made it half way through lunging, when the door opened.

Now I could probablly forgo the lunging, but five min of lunging before the ride seems the smart thing to do with a young horse on a cold day. With the snow creaking on the roof...

A neighbor from down the road poked his head in the arena and asked if I was done.

Nope, sorry, just got started.

Well, we just walked up here and no one was here, so we brought our horses. Could you just give us half an hour?
I explained that while my horse is young, I am perfectly able to share the arena.
Except I wasn't.
Because they brought in their two horses, unclipped the halters and set them free.

WTF
Who does that with another person in the ring?

So I took Tilly and made her stand in Delis stall for half an hour, fuming. Why is my time less important than theirs? While I do spend quite a bit of time at the barn, warming my pony up, then making her stand in the cold for half an hour is NEVER my plan.

Finally the interlopers finished their 'free lunging' and I was able to work Tilly. She was great. True, we had to warm up again and only worked for about twenty min, but we got a nice walk trot and canter to both directions. Even when the ice/snow came crashing off the roof, Tilly only crouched down, then resumed her trot like nothing had happened.

It must be the Code of the Pony: Thou shall not show fear.

Of course, by then I should have known that something else would go wrong.

As I'm walking Tilly back to her pen - brushed, blanketed and fed- I see everyone walking in the back corner of the property. After a "big black horse". In a raspberry blanket.
Delight.

Evidently the ice/snow that fell off the roof slid into Deli's turnout, sending her over the 4' fence, down the road, back up the road and around the property at top speed. I was beyond upset about this.
What if this had happened in the afternoon when the stall cleaners/I wasn't there? Delight could have been loose for hours.

I walked Deli around, gave her some bute for lewer leg swelling, and took RC for a cathartic ride.

When I went home I had to play with the poodles just to remind me that this isn't the worst place in the world... Just a bad day.