As you might know by now, 18-year-old Dorado is just a tad accident proneÑif there’s a way to hurt himself, pull a shoe off, or scare his mom to death, you can be pretty sure he’ll find it. And not long ago he reminded me of this fact whenÑin the middle of a very quiet longe session due to impending thunderstormsÑhe somehow managed to spook at something (I still have no idea whatÉ) and do the splits in two directionsÑwith his two hind legs and with his front and back legs. Only DoradoÉ

He quickly regained his footing and took off bucking (a sure sign he’s mad at himself!) and, once I managed to rein the wild beast in, I gave him a quick looking over to be sure hadn’t seriously injured himself. And, as if on cue, it started raining. So we headed back into the barn for the day.