More from my day yesterday...

I wrote the whole long story on Curlyhaven, and Denise suggested I put more of it on this blog. Besides just having a good ride on Sunny, I realized again how much I can trust him:
"I took him down the road, and we walked and gaited for quite a ways. We met our usual traffic, which is how Sunny earned yet another gold star. The same car we had seen pass on another road came up behind us, and I stopped Sunny like I normally do, and one of the two guys in it yelled, "very cool, I love it!" Sunny pinned his ears back, which is quite unusual for him- normally he loves it when people come by in a vehicle, bike, or on foot and stop to praise him. He'll prance and hold his head high- he's a very smart horse and knows it's all for him. It made me uneasy that he didn't do that this time. I waved and said thanks and we kept going. When we turned around and came back, I saw the same car parked on a cross roads pointing at us. At this point the conversation started in my head, between the rational and the paranoid (don't ask me which is which) "maybe they want to take a picture". "um, why didn't they just ask to when they had a chance for a closeup?" .. "I don't recognize them, maybe they're not from around here and lost." "yeah right." ... this happened in about the space of five seconds. Actually, it was Sunny who alerted me, because he stopped and stared in their direction when we made the turn. The car engine started, and I told Sunny, OK boy, let's go home! I didn't have to tell him twice, he leaped forward into a smooth canter and would have gone faster if I'd let him. About halfway down the road I asked him to slow, and he fought me a bit, probably because I was still super tense. This made me a little more scared, I thought, "he's never done this before, what if I can't stop him, I only have a lead rope, what if the knot comes undone, what if I slip from this pad at high speed on the road here..." a few more strides and I convinced him to slow to a gait, and then, peeking around behind me, I changed my route so the "creepy guys" didn't know where I lived. All in all I was being pretty paranoid, and everything was almost certainly fine, but I'm so glad to have another confirmation that I can trust my horse. I shuddered to think what would have happened if I was riding Koko. He's a sweetheart, but if I get tense, he gets flighty, and in the open like that he probably really would have run off. He just does that because he's super sensitive and is trying to please, but that sensitivity can backfire if I'm not careful, and I don't think I was doing a good job of hiding my nervousness from Sunny today!"