Our little horse, Skippy, has a calm, all business demeanor under saddle. When I first looked at her in person, prior to the purchase, I noticed that she was unperturbed by all the commotion in the big agricultural terminal we were in. Trucks and tricycles rumbled by us from every direction. Hogs squealed loud protests at being loaded into various conveyances. All this amidst the general hubbub of a multitude of people, buying and selling.
I was pleased to find that the trait carried over to our rides around our little barangay. Skippy is not fazed by yapping dogs, curious children, tricycles, motorbikes, or bicycles from any direction. She is likewise unimpressed with mechanized farm machinery of various descriptions, or beer trucks with their jostling, rattling cargo. You can imagine my surprise when Skippy shied at our first encounter with a carabao. A carabao! That ubiquitous beast of burden of tropical Asia. They are nearly everywhere in the Philippines. It would be nearly impossible to ride in our rural area without meeting at least one or two.
She has sidestepped, danced a bit, and tried the duck and turn. Fortunately, Skippy is a trusting and obedient horse. It has been a fairly simple task to convince her to continue past the scary creature.
One bit of horse psychology to understand, is that horses exist in a hierarchical world. In a horse’s view, the one who can make the other move away, even a few steps, is the one in charge. Of course, it would be terribly rude of me to chase our neighbor’s livestock around just to train my horse. Fortunately, a chance encounter gave us the opportunity to correct the problem.
Not long ago, I was riding near our front gate when a fellow came by with his carabao. He was delivering a load of construction material to us. We had met enough carabaos by this time that Skippy knew I wouldn’t tolerate any shenanigans. She stood quietly, but attentively, as the drover, his carabao, and his rig entered our gate and moved past us. Skippy and I fell in behind them.
Of course Skippy didn’t know that the carabao was supposed to be moving toward our construction site. As far as she was concerned, we were behind the carabao, forcing it to move away from us. We waited for the cargo to be unloaded, then fell in behind as the delivery man and his carabao went back out our front gate.
Later that day, we met another carabao. This one was picketed down by the river. It happened to be the first aggressive one I have ever met. It grunted and trotted towards us, shaking its massive horns. We were on the road, and the carabao was in an adjacent field, but I didn’t know how long the picket rope was. I waved my hat and yelled. The carabao turned. I pointed Skippy towards it and urged her forward. She advanced with a lively step, and the beastie retreated. We had made our point, so we returned to the road and continued our ride.
A few days later, on a ride up the mountain, we met another carabao picketed by the road. This one was a youngster. A yearling, curious rather than aggressive. It trotted towards us, bawling as it came. Without any urging from me, Skippy collected herself up like a cowhorse, and moved toward the carabao ready to push it out of our way. It seems that our little horse has gotten over her phobia of carabaos.
The View from Inner Earth 
The boys still remember Skippy! What a fine pet!
She’s a good little horse. We had a lot of fun with y’all.