Getting His Goat

The term "Getting One's Goat" is actually a horse term. Horses are animals that like companionship. Sometimes it is financially hard for people to have an extra horse as a companion animal for a primary horse. People learned long ago that a horse will be perfectly happy with a goat as a companion. Getting one's goat came about by people taking a companion goat away from a race horse on a night before a race. The horse would be so upset that it would lose the race.

With this in mind I had to deal with my horse losing his companion that we sent to auction. So my friend brought her one horse over as a companion while she took our other horse to auction in Pendelton. On her return we exchanged her horse with another of her horses. My horse quickly gets attached to new companions, but with the second companion exchange he got over it quickly. In the past if left alone he would be agitated and call for his companion for up to three days before the resignation and acceptance of loneliness set in.

These two are still trying to figure out who is who in the pecking order. He is a gelding and his companion is a mare and that sets up a whole different dynamic than two geldings. We let the two of them run together in an arena this weekend and they didn't seem to trigger any craziness in one another. The mare tested him on a few occasions and he didn't fall for it. They just ran and ran and seemed to get along just fine. Here's to the happy new couple.