For three months after I moved to Mexico I didn’t have a car. But, with the lovely weather and amazing visuals, the dogs and I loved the walks to restaurants, stores, and the plaza.

Wanting the full no-car experience, I decided to carry a load of laundry to the place that was doing my washing as I waited for the remodel to reach the point of building the room for the washer/dryer. The place is up the mountain a short way on a very busy main road but there is a path cut out so you don’t have to walk close to traffic.

I threw the bag of clothing over my shoulder and embarked with the dogs. When we came around a corner there was a horse tied to one side of the path munching.

I assumed the horse was on a short rope. I assumed my dogs would halfway behave walking past it. I assumed the horse would ignore us. Wrong wrong and wrong again.

As soon as we got about 15 feet away the horse decided to trot over and say hello. The pups were fine until it started running to us. Then Sherlock decided to eat it and Shasta decided to run for cover. I was a wishbone.

Lugging laundry, with Shasta trying to pull me into the weeds and Sherlock trying to get us under some hooves, I tried to drag both of them quickly up the rocky hill – in flip flops. As we passed, the horse suddenly came to the conclusion it didn’t want to be neighborly any more, spooked, and took a poorly aimed and half-hearted kick at the white cotton ball that was pretending it was a wolf. But we came through unscathed.

On the return trip we found the horse still there and would have to do the same dance but I was free of my donkey load, prepared to keep the dogs short leashed beside me, and figured downhill was easier. I assumed it would go better.

Wrong.

This time the horse was ready for bad behavior from the two very tiny horses. It laid its ears back and did a little pawing and a lot of snorting. This for some reason scared Sherlock and made Shasta want to run up to play with it. Sherlock headed for the weeds and Shasta took off for the horse. As I was prepared for the opposite I got wishboned again and this time drug them rapidly down the hill.

I stopped to get a picture of the horse. I was panting and shaking so bad it was hard to dig my camera out of my purse. But when I did, I looked down and saw Frick’n Frack as calm as cucumbers not at all winded. They were looking at the horse like “no big deal!”

Horses are part of what makes this place special. The Spoos are just going to have to learn barn etiquette. Or I am going to have to start working on my upper body strength more. Just another day in poodle and pony Paradise.