Stoicism, Thy Name is Francis

Emma was talking about how Princess Charlie likes to scare his mom, and it got me thinking about Frankie and how he handles the ouchies.

Because despite both being cute bay geldings, Frankie could not be further on the other end of the spectrum here: Frankie don’t give a shit. (Dad if you’re reading this I know you don’t like it when I swear but I will make it up to you somehow, probably with gratuitous flattery, you handsome talented smartest best dad in the world)

But seriously. Francis is one stoic dude. Sprung shoe? Not noticeable under saddle. Lost shoe? We kept it light, but still not noticeable under saddle. Scrapes up and down his leg from playing too hard? Threw some ointment on it and he was perfectly sound with no heat. Chomping bite mark-shaped lump on his neck? Yep, he’s fine. Weather changes and location changes and stressful situations? He seeks out the water bucket and chills. In the almost year that I’ve had him(!!!!) he hasn’t taken a single ouchie step or had a minute where he felt anything less than healthy (omg please don’t jinx this I’m knocking on every wood surface within reach).

This works out really well, because homeboy LOVES to play with his buddies outside. His favorite game in the world is Wild Island Stallion. To the point where we bought him a muzzle because STOP DESTROYING EVERYONE’S BLANKETS YA DINGUS. But all that playtime means he comes in with a new bump or scrape pretty much every day.

A split second before squealies and bities

If these bumps and scrapes seemed to bother Frankie at all, I would probably look into  changing his turnout situation. But Francis is SO happy to be outside with his buddies and clearly doesn’t much care about his battle wounds. He does fine when the weather forces him to be stuck in his stall, but he’s noticeably happier when he’s had his romping time outside.

68F in February means bath time for the Big Man

In my mind, Frankie is like an overgrown 5 year old boy. Super friendly and wants to play with the kids at recess, but doesn’t realize that he’s so big and is playing too rough. But like he’s a happy kid so when he scrapes his knee he just gets back up and says IT’S ALL OK EVERYTHING IS FINE and keeps playing. And wants to get into everything. And puts everything in his mouth. And isn’t very smart. But listens to the teacher really well. And he def won’t get into an Ivy League college but he’ll probs get recruited to play football at a good school so that’s ok. I have a whole persona for him in my head, it’s a fun one.

So maybe it’s not that Frankie is that stoic, he’s just not smart enough to realize that things hurt. It’s one of the reasons that my trainer and I discuss preventative maintenance fairly regularly to keep an eye on things: by the time Frankie actually shows us he’s hurting, he’ll likely already be in a decent amount of discomfort. So we want to really stay on top of things BEFORE he displays any ouchie behavior.

Is your horse more of an ouch-mom-this-hurts-cannot-horse-today type, or more of a rub-some-dirt-in-it-let’s-go type?

EDIT: Between writing this post and actually posting it, Frankie’s leg has gotten fat from a scrape he got while playing outside. He’s totally sound and we’re treating aggressively so it doesn’t get worse, but seriously this is what I get for talking about how sturdy my horse is. Horses, man. They’ll humble you real quick.