One thing Griffy and I share is a strong sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out.)

Griffy used to live on a small family farm; I would occasionally farm-sit when the owners were out of town. One day when I was running the show, all the horses were happily grazing in the pasture when a friend of the owner texted to say she was coming over to ride Leo.

I finished up morning chores and decided to be nice and get Leo out of the pasture so owner’s friend wouldn’t have to. I traipsed out with a halter and lead rope, got Leo, and brought him back to the barn. No sooner had I gotten him settled with a flake of hay than to my surprise Griffy trotted around the corner into the barn, completely of his own volition and stood there staring at me.

“Wrong horse, lady!” he seemed to say.

I laughed, put on his halter, and started getting him ready to ride.

Once we agreed that he was my horse and I was his human, as far as he’s concerned, he must be involved in all horse things I do. When I would ride other horses, he would stand and sullenly watch us.

I know it sounds like I’m doing some serious anthropomorphizing here, but many other people have noticed & commented on this. He just doesn’t like not being a part of the action.

Talos is not like this – when I go to their pasture, if I halter Griffy, Talos makes it known he’d like to come too. He might try to nudge the gate open or follow us out, but when once the gate is shut he kind of shrugs his shoulders and goes to check the breakfast hay situation, or he’ll stroll down to the pasture on the other side and see if the mares want to hang out (I like to think they gossip about us – “WELL. I heard from Levi who heard from Theo that in Moxie’s last lesson her human only gave her TWO CARROTS! Can you believe that?! And she didn’t even spook at the barrels!”)

If I get Talos, Griffy gets mad. Especially if it’s in the morning, because it means that Talos get his breakfast approximately 37 seconds before Griffy does. He will often yell, especially if we are somewhere he can see us, and it is not the anxious whinny of a horse who misses his herd mate. This the angry yell of someone who thinks that he’s missing out on something fun and how is that even fair.

I understand his feelings because I am the same way – there’s very little that I will say no to if all of my friends are doing it, even if it’s not something that I would ordinarily want to do. I don’t really consider this a bad trait, but also I guess I’m lucky that my friends and I all have similar interests.

However.

This is a huge horse expo that happens every year, put on by our local horse rescue. They do a training challenge with adoptable horses where the trainers work with them, and then do a show to demonstrate the skills the horse learned. It’s super fun – last year was the first time I went, and there was a trainer who did a ride to “Singin’ in the Rain” complete with a cowboy curtain made of shimmery plastic and people opening umbrellas. One horse had huge costume wings like Pegasus.

This year, they asked C. to do a demo of mounted archery. Back in April when I bought Talos, I thought maybe I could take him to it. I realized real quick that was a dumb idea – no way would we be ready for something like that. I put it out of my mind and figured I’d do ground crew.

Then C. asked me to be one of the riders on the lesson horses.

Damn it.

I was planning on saying no up until I said yes. Turns out a few others had the idea of being ground crew, so they didn’t need more help. The only way to participate is to ride. And I know myself well enough to know I’ll be miserable if I’m just sitting in the stands.

On the plus side I’m riding one of the best lesson horses, this lovely chestnut mare named Callida. She’s great.

We did MA for the first time together today during practice (she’s done it before just not with me) and she was perfect. I love my boys, but it was nice to have the chance to actually concentrate on my shooting rather than keeping my horse calm and relaxed (and spoiler alert, I suck now. Better practice!)

The Expo is Oct 5th which is two weeks from yesterday. I’ll be having a slow motion panic attack until then.