Intelligent Minds: Once in a while

No matter how much I love horses I still seem to wonder about their intelligence, often. They are just animals, so I cannot expect too much, but still, horses are beautiful creatures, I can expect more from them than the average cat. I was doing my normal Saturday afternoon chores up at the farm. As usual I started feeding the horses at the old barn first. Normally, I let all the horses in and they find their respected stalls. They know where to go, but today, there was a disturbance in the equine force. It seemed that an arch nemesis messed with all their brains. First of all, none of them wanted to come into the barn to eat their grain. Knowing horses this situation is not just weird it is crazy weird. After much persuading, Scarlet decided to bite the bullet and come into the barn. Only one stall door was open, so one would assume she would just enter into that stall. On the contrary, Scarlet walked right past that stall and into the smallest corner of the barn.

While scarlet was standing and sniffing around in the dark corner, I closed the door to the pasture. I did this so no other horses, for example Joe, would come into the barn and wreck havoc. Scarlet began sniffing around and twitching oddly. I walked over to her saying her name. Her head then began moving rapidly from left to right. My first thought, was oh my goodness, she thinks she is stuck. I backed away a little just in case if Scarlet was getting nervous that I was going to smack her or do something terrible to her. It seemed as though Scarlet was claustrophobic. She continued to look left and right rapidly and then finally tried to turn around. I was watching her bump into the walls left and right. The funny thing was, all she had to do was back up, therefore, she really was not stuck, like she thought. I began to talk to Scarlet, telling her to back up. After about five minutes, she just stopped trying altogether, similar to a small child about to have a temper tantrum. Then I decided to squeeze next to her, and move toward her head. I maneuvered my way to her head, and she was a little bit jumpy. Once I got to her head, I put my hand on her head, and applied some pressure. Scarlet slowly backed up and then walked forward into the open stall.

I closed the stall door, and stroked Scarlet on her forehead. She looked around, as if she was wondering about what had just happened. Then she looked at me, perked up her ears, and sneezed. I cleaned the residue from my face, had a quick laugh, and then went back to doing the rest of my chores. Scarlet was going to recover perfectly.