It divideth the hoof and scareth the horse

Rock Creek Park is overrun, to the point of traffic hazards, with deer. They're scenic, if you like your ungulates on hillsides, although I would rather that the suburbanite moms not stop their cars in the middle of the street to point out herds on the opposite side of the road. In a perfect world, the park would be closed to traffic for a while and we could have a brief but merry hunting season, thinning out the numbers of both deer and eedjits and providing some venison to the local food banks, but no, the guvmint is busy reforming the educational system or some such worthwhile objective. The coyotes, who are nominally their predators, are apparently busy thinning the chipmunk and small-pet niches of the ecosystem and haven't yet gotten around to sniffing out the tender juicy fawns. Come ooooon, coyotes, go where the tasty spotty meat is! I don't care how cute the bambies are, eat them before they get big and scare the horses.

Which, inevitably, they do. Doc's distaste for and mistrust of his cousins is well documented here, but tonight, it being a dressage lesson, I was with little Cappi instead. Cappi has the virtues of being speedy and smart, with the vices of being a little spooky and given to running away. I rarely get through a session on him without clearing the cobwebs out of my adrenal system in some sort of exciting outbreak. This time, though, we were doing pretty well right up until some deer crunched through the greenery outside the ring just as we were passing, and Cappi went for the rafters. I count it a point of personal growth as a rider that I did not recite my traditional mantra of Anglo-Saxon expressions at full volume (a first for this type of experience) and that I had him back in hand within 10 yards. I takes my victories where I finds 'em. He too may have benefited from the zap of cleansing fear, since just after that he managed a leg yield at the trot that drew a full-throated whoop from the teacher: "Would you look at that! Crossing like a dream!"

I'm glad that the wake-up call got Cappi working well, but now can we get rid of some of the deer? We could use the results to teach tanning and preserving and making random crafty things out of horn! And that, I guarantee, would scare my ponies less.