View from the North 40: The Gods of Irony love horses

The Gods of Irony have their own random agenda, and they rarely interact, intervene or interfere on purpose with a human - unless of course, that human has horses, then they're fair game.

Horses are magical creatures whose true gift is to be four-legged irony magnets. Want a personal visit from the Ironies? Just say about a horse task: "This will only take a minute." Mayhem is the only possible result.

There will be running, snorting, tails flying. There will be a gate mistakenly left open. There will be a gaping wound. There will be a strange, and ultimately scary, tractor, dog, bird, stray grocery bag floating on a breeze, loud noise in the distance, butterfly, dust mote or figment of a horse's imagination out there causing chaos. There will be any number of possibilities to make one minute equal 15 at best, an hour more likely.

Another irony trigger is: "I know I shouldn't do this, but ... ." The only possible ending the Ironies will allow to this opening statement is: "@#$^#, I knew better."

Want to make the Ironies dance with glee? Try this training statement: "Good job, horse. One more time and we'll call it a day." Never, never, never say that out loud around a horse. Ever.

Horse people learn about the Ironies-horse connection early in their own human-horse relationship. In fact, I think the love of horses shapes our very lives. This is not only because we make conscious decisions to shape our lives to include horses, but also because the Ironies shape our lives for us. Mine is a prime example.

I'm sure when I was a small child the Ironies said, "Hey, that little girl loves horses. She thinks they're pretty and they smell like the most wonderful thing in the world, and she loves to gallop them, and blah blah blah ... what a cliché. Let's torture her."

And so they decreed, like good fairies off their meds, that I would love, most of all, to take my horses jumping and that I would have an affinity for the arts, rather than investment banking or the kind of science that would make me a doctor. It was a bold and evil - and ironic - move because you have to travel clear across the state to find a jumping course and what kind of liberal arts major can afford to do that?

Theirs is a rare and godly cruelty.

But, if the possibility of that scene sounds too cosmically far-out-there for you to believe about the Ironies, how about this:

I decided to ride my green-broke horse to a neighbor's arena last weekend. This meant riding about 3 miles along U.S. Highway 2 on a horse that had never been out in public. Ever. No, really, it was a good idea, or about 90-95 percent good idea, and 5-10 percent fool's mission. The odds were decent, especially since I made sure not even to think: "I know I shouldn't do this, but ... ."

Yes, definitely a good idea.

And I was smart about it, riding along the fence line, a comfortable distance from any traffic - until I decided to spare my horse an unneeded hill climb by dropping down into the ditch. Sure, we were close to the road, but we could see way out ahead. and no traffic was coming. Plus, he was totally OK with the traffic.

So, here we were, taking a big, baby-step forward toward horse-adulthood, and we'd just gotten lined out in the ditch, and then my next-door neighbor spotted us.

Imagine a big, happy, bouncy, tail-wagging Labrador retriever. Now imagine him as a human. That's my neighbor. And now you know he didn't just drive by, give us a nod and call later to say, hey.

Nope, from about an eighth of a mile back, off the horse's tail side, the neighbor lays on his pickup truck horn, honk-honk-hooonk-honk-honk-hoooonk, and he gives us one of those whole-arm-out-the-window waves and hollers "Heeeyyy!" as he drives by at 70 mph.

My horse tucked his tail, flashed the white of his eyes and started hopping around, looking for the nearest bomb shelter or safe house. Granted, neither my horse, nor I died (so you can stop worrying about that) but I can guarantee you the Ironies' drinking game and bet cards were all hinging on whether or not we'd emerge successfully from the encounter.

Now, I ask you, what are the odds that, in the exact moment the horse and I arrived in the ditch for the very first time, my neighbor would be driving to town and arriving at that very same place and moment.

Odds are about 100 percent when you have the Ironies ridin' shotgun.

(Lived to tell another tale at [email protected].)