I blew it today. All week we had been telling our daughter that she would have the opportunity on Sunday to ride a horse, and Amber naturally was very excited. So today we drove over to the Houli Horse Farm, in the neighboring town of Houli 后里. This day was also the last in the 2008 Musical Instruments Festival in Taichung County, not so coincidentally being held at the very same horse ranch. Houli, for some inexplicable reason, is the "saxophone capital of the world", so saxes were in abundance this afternoon at the festival (along with other kinds of instruments). Naturally, the place was packed with families, but everyone was in a good mood. Things were looking up, and Amber enjoyed feeding bread pieces to the carp, ducks and geese:
Then came time for the horse ride, and it was here that things went wrong. We bought tickets for Pamela and Amber to go a brief couple of laps around a small field on a horse, and while my wife got in line to wait for our turn, I took Amber over to some stables nearby to get a close-up look at the horses there. One horse walked over to get a closer look at my daughter. A young worker at the horse farm asked Amber if she would like to pet the horse, and Amber was happy to do so. So far, so good. Then the animal started to get closer to her, with the worker reassuring us it only wanted to "kiss" my little girl. And here was when I made a mistake in judgment. I should have realized the horse was getting too close, but I didn't, and the next thing everyone knew, it had one of Amber's fingers between its teeth! I managed to quickly get her finger out, but not quickly enough, as she was left with a bite mark and a bit of blood on the middle finger of her left hand. Worse of all, her mood had changed instantaneously from excitement to unhappiness. And sure enough, when we returned to Pamela, Amber was no longer very enthused about getting to ride a horse. We tried to put in her in the saddle, but after moving for only a few meters, the horse's attendant explained that a crying child only serves to make a horse nervous and upset, and so Pamela had to finish the ride on her own. Instead of getting to take pictures of a happy, smiling young girl enjoying her first ride on a horse, I instead had to comfort a scared child who wanted nothing to do with horses, at least on this day. Way to go, dad!
The rest of the afternoon wasn't a complete washout. Getting to go on the swings, not to mention the chance to beat up on 7-Eleven's mascot Open Chan...:
...can do wonders for the psyche of a traumatized child. Still, if I had only acted fast enough, all of us would have had a much better outing this afternoon, and my daughter would not now be so leery of horses (her finger is still a little swollen and red from the bite, but otherwise she's fine). Someday we'll try again to get her on a horse (and when we stopped off at a pet store on the way home to get some food for our cat, Amber wasn't afraid to pet some of the dogs there). If she's still afraid of the beasts then, I'll have only myself to blame. It's a good thing we don't observe the Taiwanese version of Father's Day, which always falls on August 8 - I certainly didn't do anything today that deserved thanks.
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