RE: Appys

[Tara Wheeler <harpy@io.com>]

Title: RE: Appys

The only 'mean' appy I've ever known was in love with me and out to eat everything else alive.

Spot decided he liked me from the first moment we saw each other.  When I took my husband to see him, he ran across the pasture to me from my call and stuck his big head and neck into the car so he could love on me.  My husband knew we were buying the horse at that moment and knew any bargaining points he might have had, had just gone right out the window.

Once I purchased Spot and brought him home he decided to see what he could get away with and tried to bite me.  I decked him right in the nose.  He looked at me with wide eyes and the look on his face was not fear or anger but amazement that melted into this look of absolute love.  He never pushed me again.

Spot was out to eat my husband, the neighbors and their kids and my sheep.  He once picked a sheep up and threw it about ten feet.  He would hide and wait and then charge out at you, ears pinned, teeth bared, squealing like a stuck pig.  The neighborhood kids lived in fear that one day he'd leap the fence and come get them.  I think they had nightmares about him and that their mothers threatened them with him coming to get them if they were bad.

At a clinic he kicked a dog fifteen feet.  He'd never kicked before and just took exception to this dog running loose.   This was an anti-spook clinic and he just about fell asleep. Nothing fazed him.   He would pick up buckets and sticks and chase my other horses.  He was hell on four feet.

My husband convinced me to sell him after my neighbors refused to feed or water him when we went out of town.  I think he was genuinely worried that one day Spot would grab up a small child and throw it like he'd thrown the sheep.  I wouldn't have put it past him.

He was absolutely fearless.  I shudder to think what he would have been like in a stable or at a ride.

The other app I had at the time was the complete opposite.  Lovey was the closest thing to a bombproof horse I've ever seen.  She once put her foot down on a chicken and after a second or two noticed the noise and the flapping and looked down and slowly removed her foot.  I was firmly convinced you could shoot fireworks off this horse.  She was that unflappable.

You could put anyone on her and she'd treat them like fine china.  But she wouldn't tolerate anyone trying to muscle her around.  If you asked nicely she had the nicest gaits.  If you tried to cowboy her, she'd slow to a glacial walk and nothing could get her going again except changing riders.  She'd go deaf, dumb and totally numb to switches and spurs.

A small child once ran underneath her and grabbed her by the teats.  She slowly craned her neck around to look at the kid with this confused and sorrowful expression as if she was sorry she didn't have any milk for the kid.  She once tried to adopt a llama and just about gave it a heart attack trying to get it to join up with her.  She chased it around, calling to it as if it were a lost foal.  She guarded my sheep better than any donkey.

Spot was her nemesis and he used to chase her with a large muck bucket that for some reason, absolutely terrified her when Spot would pick it up and chase her with it.

I love apps.  It just seems as if the foundation breds are getting more and more eye problems and the others are looking and acting more and more like quarterhorses with spots.