Cob Jockey

One of the first stories Dr. Marks told me about Shae, before I even met him, was the one about the hose.  "I was picking manure out of his paddock and had the hose filling the trough at the same time, and all of a sudden, I got wet.  I look up to see Shae with the hose in his teeth, flinging it toward me.  I yelled, 'Shae!  Knock it off!' and walked backward, but he kept coming toward me, slinging it at me!  I could have sworn he was laughing the whole time."

I got to see his water-loving antics in person at school, when he did things like upend a massive salt block out of a feed pan and carry the feed pan across the pasture in order to put it in his trough.  Or put his front legs into the (rather tall) stock tank and go "swimming."  Cobs: not only do they have a sense of humor, they are definitely hydrophilic.

Connor gave me an inkling that he was as water-loving as Shae when, over the winter, they had to hang his buckets with trailer ties instead of hooks, because he would knock the bucket off the hook, drench his stall, and play with it. That sense of humor that I was told was necessary to deal with a Welsh Cob?  Definitely necessary.

He's still in that front drylot paddock, which is usually serviced by two flat-back buckets hung on bucket hangers.  Connor broke both of them in a matter of weeks.  So they put a muck-bucket style bucket out there for him.  He would flip it and then play with it, which caused it to become a shattered pile of purple faded plastic pieces.  Buckets on the ground?  Assistant Trainer Jen would fill his bucket, set it down, and he would knock it over while staring straight at her.  That sense of humor, even if you have it, only goes so far when it's 105 degrees and you're responsible for providing a normally heavy drinker with water and he's thwarting your every attempt.

So what are we doing?  He's very close to being moved down the road to the little barn, which has a more durable bucket for a waterer.  If he upends that, though, I'm going to buy him his own personal 50 gallon stock tank, in the wide and flat configuration.  That way, if he wants to go swimming, fine, but there's no way he can get enough leverage to flip it.  Not that I want to own my own personal stock tank as a boarder, but once again, sense of humor, right?

Funny ponies.