I don’t know what else to call it, but when I let my
two mustangs into the round pen each morning, they sure look to me like they’re
having fun. On weekend mornings, my wife and I usually grab a
couple cups of coffee, lawn chairs and set up outside the round pen, anxious
for the show to begin Then I open the gate from the stable area and let
Hermano, 5; and Diego, 4, into the round pen. The first thing they do is
paw the ground looking for that very special place to roll. Once thoroughly
dusted with sand, they rise as if on cue, shake for a half minute and begin
nosing each other. Soon the nosing turns to rearing and the two go up at
each other as if in fight. If they’re wearing fly masks, now is the
time to grab and pull (we go through about four fly masks per horse per fly
season.) Then Hermano, the boss mustang, begins to chase Diego, quickly
transitioning from a trot to a canter and then full out gallop as the two race
around the round pen throwing great clods of sandy dirt behind them. This
swirling chase is almost always punctuated by high, athletic leaps, usually
accompanied by head turns and tosses, which almost always generates a loud
passage of intestinal gas. We call this phase “flying farts.”
This will often go on for 10 even 15 minutes with each horse trading places as
the “chaser” and “chasee”. In the summer, the
round pen is transformed into a dust-devil if I don’t water it down
before the show opens. Minuet, our 10-month old Arab filly, wisely
chooses to stay out of the melee. Otherwise the two geldings will chase
her. But since she’s a Polish Arab, bred to race, they haven’t
caught her yet. Finally, the horses settle down, often quite literally,
lying on their sides waiting for me to open the gate into one of the pastures. I
guess some people might say horses don’t have fun in the way humans
do. I disagree. I just wish I was fast and athletic enough to join
them in their morning ritual.
