When You Hope He's Not Dead

When I got to the ranch on Sunday, I saw this.

Is he breathing?

Every horse owner loves to see her four legged friend take a good nap, but every single one of us has, at one time or another, gone into panic mode when the sleeper looks a bit too stiff legged. Our smile slips, and we look for the tell-tale rise and fall of the belly. We look to see an ear twitch, the tail shoo away a fly. It doesn't take much movement to reassure us that he's still alive; any little twitch will do.

OMG, he even dug his own grave!

As I snuck up on Izzy, I prayed that he was still alive while also trying to be quiet in case he really was just resting. As morbid as it sounds, I continued snapping photos even as I worried that he had had a heart attack after breakfast but before I arrived. They get breakfast between 7:00 and 8:00. It was 9:30 when I got to the ranch, so if he had had a heart attack, it would have been in the past hour. How quickly does rigor mortis set in anyway? 

Can't a guy get in a nap?

Even though I was trying to be very quiet, Izzy still heard me. He snapped his head up to see what monster was about to get him. I think we both took a quick look at the freshly dug hole. He was probably worried that I was about to push him in. I worried that he was going to fall into it and break his neck as he tried to get up. Once he saw that there was no monster, just me, he gave a deep sigh and relaxed. I crawled through the fence to sit with him. I tried to tell him he could go back to sleep, but the moment had passed. He hauled himself to his feet and looked for a cookie.

I love to watch my boys nap, but it gives me a heart attack each and every time.