This barn is our first experience with stalls, and one thing I noticed early on is that some of the horses, including mine, leave the stalls a bit…aggressively.

I get why – the stalls open into the giant indoor arena. When it’s 10,000 degrees outside, like it is now, they get turned out in there. So to them it’s part work space, part playground, all excitement.

Some owners don’t care, and I get it – it’s fun to watch them burst out of their stalls, throwing feet in the air and then diving to the ground for a roll. But I don’t want to be mowed down by an exuberant haflinger or smooshed beneath an excited friesian cross.

I started off insisting they be haltered and led out of their stall to the front of the arena every single time they were going out, and yeah, that lasted all of 2 days.

So I invented the Wait-Wait-Ok go! game.

It’s not anything crazy. I just haltered them, then opened the door, then asked them to wait.

Talos does ok – he likes to push the door open with his nose to “help” and then he really sees no reason to stop. It’s not that he doesn’t want to do it, he just forgets. When I tell him “Wait” his reaction is “Huh? Oh….well, I’m halfway out already, but I’ll stand here, I guess.”

Griffy, on the other hand, is a pro.

He loves little games. He loves figuring out how to get more good boys. So he took to this immediately. Now we do it without a halter – just stand there, wait a few seconds, then I say Ok go! and we walk out together.

I’m not saying he never bursts out of his stall – sometimes he just gets really excited at the prospect of a good roll in the dirt, or stealing everyone else’s alfalfa if they happen to leave it within his reach, or any other general mischief. But, most of the time, he’s pretty invested in the game.

Today when I went to the barn, there was an early lesson in progress. A student was riding a lovely mare named Moxie, who I like to call Moxarella Stix.

I gathered all my stuff and went to get Griffy. I walked in to his stall, latched the door behind me, got his halter down, turned around….and saw to my horror, I had not in fact latched the door, and it had swung WIDE open.

My heart dropped to my stomach. All I could think was, “He’s going to race out of the stall, and do a big dramatic buck, and scare the absolute shit out of Moxie, who certainly did not expect a haflinger explosion, and the student’s going to fall, and Catherine’s going to murder me, and I haven’t made out my will yet….”

From the depths of my soul, I could only muster up one word:

“WAIT.”

And he DID.

He just stood there while I frantically fumbled with his halter saying “OMG yes yes good boy good boy wait yes good boy…”

Stood still while I put it on. Stood still until I asked him to walk out. Walked politely to the grooming area with me. I could not shower him with enough good boys. And now I have to go buy 20 lbs of carrots that I mentally promised him if he would just not get this student killed.