You know,

[camwyn]

normally when people's childhood fantasies start coming true, it's rather different than this... see, when I was a kid I had lots and LOTS of Breyer model horses. Loved 'em. Loved the idea of horses. Never got to ride 'em except maybe once or twice until I was twelve and we moved away from New York City, so the model horses were all I could get. I played with mine, though, didn't just collect 'em, and inevitably they broke. An awful lot of my horses had legs broken off at the pastern or front knee. I couldn't bear throwing them away - I played with my favourites a lot and that meant the ones most likely to break were the ones I liked best - so I built them prosthetics out of cardboard and LOTS of Scotch tape, and the horses spent their time running around on 'robotic' legs but otherwise being quite happy with their lot.

So you can imagine my surprise when, of all the games I played in childhood, that one turned out to be the one that became reality thanks to a news article from Reuters:

Barnaby The Horse Gets An Artificial Leg

Today's pulp survival tip is # 43. Get your priorities straight. 1. Saving the world 2. Saving a loved one 3. Your own survival 4. Personal vengeance 5. Treasure is about right.

Comments

[lwood.livejournal.com]

My friend Diana (aka The Infamous DLP) has pointed out in the past that she got over being horse-mad by actually taking care of them for awhile, at which point she realised that the horse is a rather stupid animal. Moreover, while equine (and related) intelligence increased as an inverse function of size, the sheer evilness of said equine did also.

Obviously, given these limits, miniature horses will soon Take Over the World.

-- Lorrie

As it happens,

[camwyn]

I've tried that cure. A week of taking care of horses at camp in August ought to cure a body pretty well, right? I mean, since the camp includes mucking out the stalls as part of the daily activity?

Oddly enough, that didn't make it go away. Nor did one of the horses stepping on my foot, or just last year being aboard a horse named Daisy who decided to roll over while I was still on her back. (I got out of the saddle in time, but all I could think to do when I grabbed her reins was yell 'NAUGHTY horse!' and trade her in for a different animal.) Yeah, they're stupid, yeah, they smell, yeah, they shed and sometimes have bad tempers, but somehow... it just never seems to matter.

Ah, well. At least the little old Chinese lady whose stand I went to at the mall some months ago informs me that Tiger-borns like me would do well to associate with horses. (Even if the horses are stupid.) "Tiger and horse together - anything possible!"