Norwegian Forest Cats and Halloween

And BAM! She took that gargoyle down like a pro.

As you know, Halloween is next week, so I thought I’d better get the decorations out of storage and up before the trick or treaters showed up.

It took me a while because my full Halloween decoration set includes orange lights, styrofoam headstones, and motion-activated items like a flying gargoyle with wings that move, a crawling skeleton, and a weird-looking psycho babydoll that even scares me.

This is where my cats enter the picture so let me introduce you to my two Norwegian Forests.

The male, Toby, is the big, adventurous one who has total control of our Burmese Mountain dog.

His sister Wolfy is the original scaredy-cat.

She disappears when anyone comes to the front door, runs from the dog, and stays up high to avoid the Roomba (our robot vacuum cleaner).

OK, the scene is now set so let’s get back to the action…

So Toby is the first one out the door and into the garden to check out the new additions with Wolfy following timidly behind.

However, big, brave Toby gets too close to the gargoyle, the motion detector goes off and it starts flapping his wings and talking like a madman.

Whoosh!

Toby goes flying back to the house, leaping over Wolfy on the way, through the front door, along the hallway, into the bedroom and straight under the bed.

I’d expected Wolfy to follow suit but when I looked around she was crawling on her stomach, tail twitching, and in full prowl mode.

I watched her sneak up on the gargoyle as it moved, get right underneath it, and then…

She pounced and sent that thing flying to the ground!

It instantly stopped moving so she moved in closer, sniffed it, chewed at it a bit, and then turned around and proudly pranced back into the house as if she had just saved the world.

The scaredy-cat was actually the huntress!

That’s females for ya?

That one moment showed her in her full colors and it brought out her true nature.

Now how does this relate to horses?

Well, I’ve often seen this happen with horses too.

Owing to past traumas that have left very strong fear memories, they are often fearful or distrusting.

Did you know that horses have long memories and that goes for fear memories as well? These past traumas can also be triggered by a smell, a sound, or even the anticipation of something similar happening.
So when you think your horse is being “bad” or has “an issue”, he may simply be reacting to a fear memory that you know nothing about.

However, when we can help our horses get past these issues and give them the opportunity for their natural instincts to come back. That way they can become the strong, trusting, loving creatures they were born as.

The simplest way to help your horse get over any of his fear memories is that when he reacts to “something” that you can’t find a good reason for…just allow him his opinion and be calm and patient with him. Allow him to avoid “that” area, or “that” person, or whatever seemed to trigger him.
Remember they often smell, see and hear things we don’t. Trust your horse and show him that you are listening and want to protect him. This will only help cement your bond together.

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