Over the past weeks I have learned a lot. I am excited to get an opportunity to show him all the things I can do without even putting a halter on
Maverick. I have traveled a road to equine enlightenment and I can’t wait for further enlightenment.
I finish making my turn and gear back up again to drive the last few
kilometers to my much anticipated destination. It is as the engine starts humming that steady drone of top gear that my thoughts wander to what I have learned about Maverick since first stepping out into his paddock on that first day.
Day one
saw me take Jax’s first piece of advice and I found myself sitting under a large, shady, flowering gum tree right in the middle of Mavericks paddock. I had chosen this particular tree (being the direct thinker that I was) because I figured the middle of the paddock was the best place for him to be able to find me.
I
had taken my latest book, one of my beloved romance novels, and I had successfully managed to be swept away into the world of alpha men. As I read, I fantasized the lead male in the book was of course Jax and I was the leading female.
After what only felt like five minutes, but what had turned out to be a whole three hours, I started to notice a couple of things.
The first was that I had a sore butt.
Stupidly I had been sitting on the ground and a much better plan would have been to bring a deck chair and not torture yet another part of my poor wounded body. The second, surprisingly, was that sitting under a tree reading a book meant absolutely nothing to Maverick.
And I mean nothing.
As far as I could see, he hadn’t even looked at me. Not once.
The entire time I had been sitting there he had simply stood under another tree at the far end of the paddock (the furthest tree from my house come to think of it), and stared at our neighbors cows.
Now I find cows fascinating too, they have beautiful eyes and they come in a massive range of
colors, but really? Staring at them for three hours had to be a record for any man or beast.
I chalked his interest
in cows up to a less than satisfactory childhood with limited-access to bovine friends. With this in mind, I packed up my book, stood up, gave my poor tortured butt a good rub and decided that I would call it a day.
It was at the exact moment that I exited the paddock
, and just as I finished clicking the latch into place on the gate, that Maverick moved. It was a slow, casual movement. One that saw him slowly swing his head towards me, prick his ears up brightly and I swear if he could talk, he would have said, “Leaving so early?”
Cheeky bastard.
Day two saw me doing an exact repeat of the day before, this time with a deck chair. I’m not sure whether it was the unexpected effort he saw me taking to do the same thing two days in or a row, or whether it was my fluorescent yellow deck chair, but that day did see him spend the three hours facing my direction.
I was pleased to see that
day that I was more interesting than the cows next door. I was not so pleased to see that he remained under his same distant tree. I figured that it was at least progress and it was at that point that my stubbornness began to kick in. I started vowing I would do this every day until he at least approached me of his own accord.
It had ended
up taking four days for this happen and when it did I was almost excited enough to contact the local paper and pay for them to post up a congratulations notice to myself.
This was because d
ay three had been similar to day two, with one small exception. This exception was that after placing my deck chair under the tree, Maverick watched me for a short time and then casually wandered a couple of trees closer to me.
This placed him about a quarter of the way up the paddock and at almost the halfway mark between me and his normal position at the back of the paddock. He then spent the rest of our time under his new tree looking like it was the normal place for him to be to do whatever he did when he stood around doing ‘nothing’.
Day four was just plain exciting. Day four saw me barely setting my deck chair on the ground underneath my tree when Maverick turned from his spot at the back of the paddock and pricked both his ears. He then set his big round eyes on me and walked straight across the paddock to my tree.
On arrival, he gave my chair a sniff and then leaned across and gave me an almighty shove in the shoulder that nearly doubled me over with the pain of my ribs twanging from his assault.
The only reason I didn’t scream was because I was so damned proud of him. I was so proud that he had approached me directly that I was scared to move a muscle in case he took off back to his distant lookout position. So, instead of buckling over and howling at the top of my lungs, I simply sucked it up. I sucked it up and sat down on my chair and started reading. Reading with silent tears of pain running down my face, but doing what I planned to do. Reading.
Maverick
then decided that my deckchair and I were here for his sole amusement. He then spent the next few hours gently lip nibbling my chair, my clothes, my hair, my book and at one stage, he even tried to lick my face. I think he was chasing the salty tears.
At
one stage I started to wonder if he wasn’t part golden retriever (tactile). To say that I was astounded at this new horse that had arrived under my tree would have been an understatement. I was in heaven. I was falling in love with my Arabian gelding called Maverick.
The coming weeks after first ‘contact’
, Maverick revealed more and more to me about his personality and his likes and dislikes. It soon became clear that Maverick was a horse who insisted that unless he chose to touch you first, there was no way he was going to put up with being touched for the rest of the day. I slowly worked this out through a series of trial and errors that saw me accidentally offending him on a few occasions and wrecking what I was now referring to as our ‘dates’.
I also continued to follow Jax’s advice and spent many hours grooming and touching him all over. Only doing this after he had of course made
his
first contact by lip nibbling me to advise I had permission to touch.
These sessions grooming him proved to be far more challenging than I had first expected. I had always caught and tied a horse up before brushing them and I soon realized there was a reason for this.
In the beginning, it appeared the slightest fast or erratic movement on my behalf would result in him spinning, kicking out and racing off back down the paddock to his favorite distant sentry point. I soon also worked out these outbursts could be triggered by a twig snapping, a cow mooing, a car driving past or even a bee farting. In other words he pretty much over-reacted to anything once he decided he was
out of there
.
Luckily he did appear to be as forgiving as Jax said all horses were and, each day, he would wander back up to our allotted tree and we would restart whatever I had been practicing
the day before (like brushing his belly).
Despite his efforts to best me, we continued to progress getting a little further each day. It was not until about the three week mark that I could pretty much do anything to him with a brush or my bare hand. For either, he would just stand there looking lazy and relaxed like I was his personal slave performing a manicure.
The next three weeks saw me focus on finding his itchy spots. Man did he
love
a scratch at the base of his shoulder and between his front legs. We then progressed to me picking up and cleaning out his feet in the middle of paddock.
At some stage during all this I also realized that we were no longer spending time together under the gum tree in the middle of the paddock, he was always waiting for me at the gate when I got there.
And so all the time spent with Maverick had led me on a merry journey that brought me back to here. My imminent arrival at Jax’s house being the exciting next step in riding my beloved Maverick and what I hope will be the exciting next step in getting to know Jax himself.
The Jax side of things I figure will be a lot easier than the Maverick side of things. To be honest about it all, even though I now feel like Maverick and I are buddies, I am just not brave enough to get on him on my own. This is because my last
round of injuries have done a number on me. I am scared and no matter how much I try to talk myself out of it, I can’t shake that fear.
I once again hope (and pray), that Jax will take pity on me and just get on and ride Maverick himself. I can fully understand that he also needs to work with me on my riding skills.
Knowing this, I still hope that even if he can just take away that initial pressure from me, I will be one step closer to regaining my confidence enough to climb back in the saddle.
I see Jax’s front entranceway looming up ahead and gear down to make the slow turn into his driveway. The six weeks that have elapsed since my last visit have seen the property transform from lush
green pastures to tinder dry, brown crispy paddocks. It has been a long, hot summer and the land looks parched.
The small garden beds at the end of the driveway are looking a little worse for wear but remain neatly manicured and have been receiving regular attention to keep them watered.
I slow to a stop, press the button for the automatic gate opener and start slowly creeping my car and float along his driveway.
My more positive outlook on life (and horses), mean that as I
creep along the driveway this time, I take the opportunity to look a little more closely at the variety of horses dotting the paddocks along Jax’s driveway. It soon becomes obvious that so many of them are Arabians with their classic dished heads, big eyes, tipped ears and high tail sets.
One horse in particular catches my attention.
A shiny black horse. He is relaxing under a tree in a paddock directly in front of Jax’s house. This horse looks to me to be perfection. With his black coat shining with sparkles of silver and purple as the sun reflects off his magnificent smooth, powerfully muscled body. This horse clearly shows that he isn’t just a paddock ornament; he is a riding horse who is ridden. A horse who is ridden a lot.
He has a short, wide,
chiseled head with the biggest, roundest, poppy eyes I have ever seen. His face tapers down to a tiny muzzle with big rounded nostrils. All of this is crowned with short neat tipped ears and the thickest, glossiest, longest, mane and tail I had ever seen on any one horse.
He looks like one of those typical Arabians you see in oil paintings being held by a Sheik. A Sheik who would also be holding a beautiful eagle perched on his arm.
I swing my gaze away from the black Arabian just in time to see Jax rounding the side of his barn carrying a rope halter. The rope halter is clipped to what looks like a long lead rope. I see him glance up, hesitate slightly, then reset his course direct towards me.
If I thought I was
enamored with the black Arabian, the vision of Jax heading straight towards steals every breath of air out of my lungs.
I
had forgotten how beautiful he was.
Today he is again dressed in blue faded jeans and leather boots. He has on a black, tightly fitted singlet that gives me just enough of a view to suspect that underneath his clothes he is sporting a nice six pack that would be every woman’s dream. Today he is also wearing a black baseball cap and once again, his face is framed with a pair of sexy black sunglasses.
Oh boy.
A million lustful thoughts run through my head at once and just as many prickling sensations soar across my skin and through my body. This guy does set me on edge which is
probably not a good thing.
After our last contact, and my idiotic reaction to him, I really need to rein it in. He has already given me a much-needed second chance and the poor guy will probably run screaming if I shoot off at the mouth again and make even more of an idiot out of myself.
Apart from that, I need him to fix my horse.
I steel myself for whatever our first words to each other are going to be. I do this while sending a silent prayer to God that he won’t mention our last conversation.
I bring my car to a stop near his yards and quickly exit it to make sure I at least look like I am keen to be here and conduct horse business this time.
Looking all man, Jax glances direct at me then strides straight past me towards my float asking casually, “Hey Ash, how
’d he travel?”
I send another silent prayer up thanking the dear Lord that seemingly Jax is
not
going to mention our last conversation and he appears more than willing to just move on and get down to the business of my horse.
Relief washes over me as I relax.
“Great! Well more than great. As you can see, today I am even on time he is so great. He walked onto the float without hesitation and was no drama at all. It was like float loading a new horse.”
This had been one of things that had astounded me this morning when I had gone out to his paddock to catch him and then nervously gone about the business of loading him on the float all by myself.
In fact, I had actually gone out a full two hours early thinking that it was going to take so long. What with me having to go it alone (Jen had had to work this morning), and memories of our last efforts flashing through my mind, I figured I was in for a long fight.