It is easy to forget that horses are prey animals, since they regularly allow dangerous mammals to scramble onto their backs and start giving orders. Side note: I recently saw a meme of a horse with forward-facing, predator eyes, and the vision was unsettling in the extreme.

But the equine family never entirely forgets its origins. One time, after I had just about gotten pony Blizzard to accept the idea of me sitting on his back, I made the mistake of taking off my hard hat and setting it on the pommel of the saddle. Apparently, it slid into his peripheral vision, because he went ballistic. I just saved myself from getting thrown by clapping that hat back on my head. Another time my loaner horse, Nova, saw something (who knows what—maybe a butterly) and did a magnificent jump to the left with all fours, leaving me behind to land lightly in the dirt beside her.

And now, children, I shall tell you the legend of Panther’s Corner. Leaving Judes Ferry farm, our long winding driveway took us past a neighbor who had an amazing array of passive-aggressive dogs. When we rode, biked, or walked by, the dogs would come boiling out, barking, snarling and circling. Our M.O. was to throw rocks, and they would skedaddle, or at least hurl insults from a safe distance. It got so we just had to lean down and touch the ground for them to back off.

Horse Nova, being the skittish type, did not like the dogs, so I took to cutting across the field before I got next to the neighbor’s house. Unfortunately, there was a pile of old lumber or something, covered by a shiny black tarp, just inside the trees next to the path I took. Every day was a Scylla-Charybdis experience, with Nova scared of the dogs on her right and the rustling tarp on her left. I was encouraged not to ride halfway between because there was corn or something growing there.

So, every day I gently encouraged Nova to get used to the tarp, glistening and crackling in the sun as it did, like some amorphous, semi-sentient creature that you might expect to find deep in the ocean. She snorted, rolled her eyes, did that four-legged sideways jump of hers to try and unseat me, and eventually, we got by that point, only to repeat the performance again the next time.

One day, after many weeks of effort, she consented to walk straight past the spot. She was shaking and sweating all over, eyes ringed all around with white, but she kept a steady forward gait along the path. And then, disaster. Our idiot dog, Frito, decided at that moment to join the party. He came running out of the woods, jumped over the tarp pile, and landed right in front of us.

I walked home that day, shaking the dust off my pants, and eventually caught up with Nova by the pasture fence. My Dad dubbed the spot “Panther’s Corner,” and from that day until the day she left the farm for good, I had to get off and lead her past it every time.