I was cleaning stalls one lovely morning, just after feeding the boys. Just because I'm a picky kinda guy, we designated one wheelbarrow for feed, and another for poop. I had parked the feed wheeelbarrow just outside the barn door, and proceeded in to clean. George & Kooter both, being curious & helpful individuals, circuited in & out throughout the process, seeing if they could be of any assistance (more likely they wanted to check if I'd left any errant scraps of hay or grain laying about, but this is my story & I'm gonna tell it the way I want). Our barn is small, containing only 2 10x12 stalls fronted by a 4' aisleway that spans across both. This doesn't leave a lot of maneuvering room; explaining why the feed wheelbarrow was parked outside.
On one recon tour, George & Kooter managed to get themselves crammed into the same small space, & one of them had to back out. Being the Big Brother & Official Trailblazer, George took the initiative. As he backed out, he bumped his hocks on the feed wheelbarrow. Now normally this wouldn't have bothered him; he would have simply taken a step forward, re-aligned himself and continued on his way. This time however, he turned around, gave that wheelbarrow the oddest look, and suddenly embarked on a rather frightening rampage. Something inside George must have told him that wheelbarrow was inherently evil, possessed by a demon, or responsible for unspeakable sins wrought on scores of innocent souls. Whatever the reasoning behind it, the next few moments were rather striking; pardon the pun.
At first George just sort of grunted and turned his head to eye the first offending demon. Having taken sufficient aim, he then lambasted the wheelbarrow with both back feet; sending it whirling across the paddock & bouncing off the fence. I was just about to scold him for being somewhat over-reactive, when he decided that a simple double-barreled kick was not sufficient to save mankind from a beast of this magnitude. He stomped over to the wheelbarrow, snorted loudly at it and to my complete surprise suddenly reared & brought both front feet down on it. No sooner had I yelled at him when he dealt another crushing blow to the now seriously misshapen thing; and another, and several more after that. In fact, by time George was done, there were pieces of that "unbreakable" wheelbarrow scattered across 3 paddocks, the driveway & the barn. Sweaty & puffing, but apparently quite proud, George stood for a moment to survey his handiwork, snorted one last time at it, then walked calmly away as though nothing had ever happened.
I've since taped the wheelbarrow back together (we now call it Frankenstein), and George holds no ill will towards it whatsoever. We never did figure what prompted that display; the closest we could imagine is that in some way George may have figured he was protecting his brother somehow. Hey, if you can come up with a better idea, I'm all ears.
