Poop…

At a riding lesson today, my trainer joked that her life revolved around poop.  It’s so true – as a horse person at nearly any level, that’s what it’s all about.  It’s about 95% poop oriented, and 5% riding.  You are either scooping poop, dragging poop, pushing poop, or feeding the horse which creates more poop.  I’m sure many of my readers have never cleaned a stall – most non-horse people wrinkle their noses in pure disgust at the idea of cleaning a stall…as if we pick up the poop with our bare hands or something.  Let’s be honest, picking up after my dog is way more disgusting than cleaning a stall.  Either way, let me tell you about the FIRST time I cleaned a stall.  I already mentioned in an earlier post that I knew how to saddle a horse before I ever did it.  You would think that cleaning a stall would be way more simple than tacking up a horse…
In the early days at the barn, I was very timid and shy.  I hardly spoke to anyone, but I was determined that I knew how to do it.  After all, I read the books.  Could cleaning a stall be that hard?  So when I was asked to clean my horse’s stall, I picked up a pitchfork and wheeled the wheel barrow down the aisle of the barn to my new horse’s stall and proceeded to “clean a stall”.  My method of everything is to start in one place and finish that spot before moving to the next.  So I started to clumsily scoop up heaps of the bedding (I might should add, it was perfectly clean non-soiled bedding) and dump it into the wheel barrow.  Bedding is the stuff in the stall the horse sleeps, poops, and pees on.  Usually either straw or wood shavings – we used shavings.  Some stalls have rubber mats as a base (underneath the bedding), but at Mrs. Brenda’s it was an old fashioned dirt floor.  With a dirt floor there’s not always clear definition of where bedding stops and dirt starts (it happens when a horse is constantly walking around grounding stuff up).  So I continued to scoop up and dump into the wheel barrow – still working on my one spot.  I did this for about 5 minutes when an older, more experienced horse girl walked into the stall and declared in total shock, “WHO DUG A HOLE IN THE STALL?!!!”  This wasn’t so unusual during this phase of my life, but I was speechless.  I wanted to cry!  My face must have turned 15 shades of red.  I guess the girl figured it out, because she quickly moved to a new topic of conversation while she filled the hole back in and proceeded to correctly clean the stall while I stood dumbfounded in the center.  Literally, she had to clean around me.
Don’t worry – for as much poop as I’ve scooped in the last 15 years of my life, I have it figured out now.  In fact, during the winter Olympics a couple of years ago I found myself managing a barn surrounded by snow.  We weren’t doing much riding thanks to the snow, so there was nothing to do but scoop poop.  In order to entertain myself I created my own “Poop Olympics”.  I had daydreams of finding a competitor and filming the Poop Olympics to post on YouTube.  Of course the video would instantly go viral and I would get to show off my poop skills on The Ellen Show!  My favorite (and maybe only) game was “The Turd Toss”.  Using an approximately 5′ long pitchfork I would attempt to toss a single turd into a wheel barrow from varying distances – sometimes up to 20′.  Once I had that down pretty good, I would do 2 turds at once.  During this time, I would often look up to see a very happy dog chewing on what appeared to be a treat that she truly cherished.  Upon closer inspection, it was a “turdsicle”!  That’s a winter delicacy for barn dogs across the world! 😉

Lesson for the day:  Sometimes it’s easier just to ask questions.

Soli Deo Gloria
~Sarah