Drop Dead Shed

I like to think that as a foal, Gogo was a brilliant young student in school who occasionally let her rebellious streak get the better of her. For sure, she aced every single test in Grazing 101, further interned at the Maintaining Your Weight On Air corporation, and won top honors in Making Doe Eyes At Your Human For Treats class. Other areas of study proved less interesting to her, however, and she slacked in classes like How Not To Be Terrified Of Random Non-Threatening Inanimate Objects At Inopportune Moments, or Keeping Four On The Floor: A Guide To Self-Preservation While Injured. While these might have been minor inconveniences that lowered her GPA, there were some days of school she just should not have cut... like the day they covered Shelter-Seeking Behavior in her Survial 101 class. Apparently, she wasn't present for it.

Today was one of those days that demonstrated her lack of occasional sensibility when it comes to exceptionally simple matters. If you remember her troubles with the grazing muzzle, you'll understand exactly what I'm talking about. We've had rain on and off all day, starting with an enormous thunderstorm early this morning, which I brought her inside for. Later in the day the rain relented, and I tossed her back outside, but by the time I got back from work at the end of the day, the rain had started driving again, and I went to go toss a rainsheet on her. Bobo, in the next field, was peacefully standing under his shed, dozing lightly and tuning out the sounds of the weather around him. Gogo, however, was standing with her butt to the wind, NEXT to her shed, getting rained on and shivering for all she was worth. I put her clothes on, retrieved a halter, and told her, "Woman, you are GOING in the shed if it kills me!"

Well. It very near did kill me, as Gogo ballooned vertically to the size of a small giraffe the moment she set foot in the shed. I couldn't figure out why she was so terrified, but when I attempted to turn her back around, she very nearly ran me over as she bolted around me, attempting to gallop away from whatever mystery terror was on the far side of the shed. Pulling her back around, I led her over to the terrifying side of the structure, peering back around the outside of it in my attempt to figure out the source of her terror. It wasn't the howling wind, it wasn't the rain pelting the top of the metal shed. Nope... it was the pile of bricks outside of her pen, on the other side of the fence. The bricks that have been there for five months. The bricks she has seen every single day. For five months.

Standing in the rain, jets of steam blasting from her wet nostrils, volumious body rippling from head to toe with terrified shivers, I thought she had never looked more like a beached whale in distress.

Somehow, I managed to get her back into the shed, despite the fact that every time I turned her away from the bricks, she bolted. She stood still for a moment after I removed her halter once we were back in the shed, and then she promptly turned tail and galloped away, slowing to an incredibly sound looking trot as she reached the gate. By this time, hail was falling, so she opted to turn around and let the vastness of her hiney take the full brunt of the weather, standing there in the rain with a very put-out face on. From the other side of the fence, Bobo peered around the outside of his shed and nickered, as if to say, "Women."

Shelter right there, but nope. She won't use it. She'd rather get nailed on the head by rogue hailstones and die.



Oh Gogo.