“I’m not going to approach the horse directly. Instead, I’ll see if he’ll come to me.”
Sparrow gives the horse a long look, then sends me a nod. I’m cautious as I let myself into the paddock, watching his every move.
“You sure you wanna do that?” Luke asks, reflexively running a hand over his shoulder.
When Luke and Sparrow first met, he’d been thrown from a horse and outed in a big rodeo event. His shoulder had been wrenched out of its socket and had to be reset in the field. I remember watching it on SportsCenter, thinking he was one tough son of a bitch.
Now that I know him, he’s both exactly that tough and, conversely, exactly that soft.
“Let’s have you two wait there in case he’s still associating y’all with what happened to him. He doesn’t know me, so I’ve got a better shot at being friends.”
“I’m keeping my hand on the gate in case I need to run in after you,” Luke calls out.
Sweet guy.
“Sounds good,” I call back.
Javier’s brows come together. “Levy, are you sure this is safe?”
“Levy’s good with the horses,” Ant says. “He won’t do anything unsafe.”
Charlie nods and puts his hand on Ant’s shoulder. “Ant’s right. Levy’s as good as Sparrow and Luke when it comes to managing a ruffled horse.”
As we talk, the horse, whose name we weren’t given, finally sees me and immediately goes to the other end of the paddock. I’m more accustomed to this sort of fear response, so I send Javier a quick wink and focus on the task at hand.
The horse is unsettled, he’s in a new place, and I’m a new person. Time to make his first memory here super positive. Instead of trying to approach him, I cross the paddock until I’m opposite from where everyone is standing.
With his focus now on me, I sit with my back against the fence, crossing my legs. I respect his space while making myself as small and unintimidating as possible.
Reaching into my pockets, I pull out an apple and my knife. Cutting the apple in half, I take a big noisy bite. The Appaloosa’s ears quirk in my direction, and I take another big bite, chewing loudly enough for the sound to make it across the paddock.
He starts making his way over, and I’m guessing he’s pretty hungry because he’s not wasting any time. As soon as he gets close, though, he slows to a cautious plod, eyeballing me, probably looking for any fast movements.
True story, the horses don’t give a shit about my tattoos and have never once been intimidated by my piercings. Horses are all about the vibes. Considering I got fucked really well last night, my vibes are immaculate.
Better yet, I have sugar cubes. Taking one, I crunch down on it, and that really gets his attention. Apples are one thing, but sugar cubes…sugar cubes are heaven.
He moves in a little closer but still well out of reach. I take another bite of the apple, crunch down on another sugar cube, then hold out my hands. One with an apple half and the other with a couple of sugar cubes.
Since horses are prey animals, once trust has been broken, you’ve often got a slow walk to them feeling comfortable around humans. That said, as a prey animal, they’ve got pretty damn good instincts about people. Instead of assuming it’ll take a super long time, I’m trying—gently—to see if we can establish something quicker. It works about half the time.
He closes the rest of the distance, ignoring the apple in favor of the sugar cubes.Score. He snuffles it out of my flat hand, not even trying to use his teeth. Once he’s finished feasting on the sugar cubes, I place the carrot on the newly cleared hand and keep the apple in the other, holding both up to him as I stay seated. He sniffs the apple, then the carrot, and decides to eat that.
One of my favorite sounds in the whole wide world is a horse crunching on a carrot, and he’s really good at it. Finally, he takes another sniff at the apple and decides it’s good enough for him too.
Slowly, I reach for more sugar cubes from my front pocket. Once I have his undivided attention, I stand. He steps back but lingers before rocking forward to take the sugar cube from my hand. When I walk toward the open stall, he doesn’t follow, again lingering from a safe distance.
It’s too soon to break the touch barrier, and I don’t want to risk harming our relationship if I try petting him now. I leave a few sugar cubes on his feed and step out of the stall to see if he takes the invitation. He keeps an eye on me, but I know he wants those sugar cubes.
Finally convinced I won’t harm him, he steps carefully into the stall, then straight for the cubes. Once he finishes those, he starts in on the feed.
The stall doors are made of black bars so it’s easy to see inside and identify whether or not a horse is distressed. He barely reacts to the sound of the door closing.
I turn toward the truck to find Lynn has joined us.
“That was amazing,” Lynn says, her pale-blue eyes crinkling up in a big smile. “Only person I’ve ever seen calm down a horse that quickly is Sparrow.”
I shrug. “Yeah, he already had a bad interaction with the horse this morning, which is why I’m in here and not him. Sometimes it takes a really long time, but we got a little lucky today.”
