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[RC] My Little Monster - kathy swigart

Tori said:
 
> Since he was competing with his roommate, Marla,
> for the carrots, they both had to do the same
> thing to get them. Since Marla isn't mine and
> I've never done this with her in the pen before
> I was really surprised at how quickly she caught
> on to what I was asking. Since Marla is one of
> Kat's thoroughbreds I'm sure she'll have some
> comment about brainy thoroughbreds and her training.
 
Actually, Marla was Tom's thoroughbred before she was Kat's thoroughbred and Tom taught Marla this same trick when she was a weanling, although with sugar lumps and not carrots (Kat was away in Russia while this was happening).  However, Tom, out of self-presevation, stopped doing this with Marla when she was a two-year old and he walked through her living quarters to put away his saddle after riding his other horse and when Marla came to him for a sugar lump and didn't get it she longed at him and shoved him into the water trough.
 
She has shoved some other people into water troughs when she hasn't gotten from them what she thinks she is due. It doesn't surprise me in the least that she picked up on the "come for a carrot thing" quickly.  The word that I have used to describe Marla from the day that she was born is "opportunist." She has never much cared for people except as a source of the good things she can get from them.
 
It is good that Tori did the "go away" thing at ths same time as the "come for the carrot thing" with Marla, as move away is an important thing to include when giving Marla any kind of reward. And it is probably a good thing that she had Hawkeye with her and not Marla when she was tyring to do the "walk through the mud puddle thing" and got "touch the mud puddle and ask for a carrot" instead.  As, if Marla were to run true to her childhood training, she wouldn't have just muddied Tori's shirt when she didn't get a carrot, but rather would have shoved her into the mud puddle instead.
 
Marla is NOT as endearing of a monster as Hawkeye.
 
kat
Orange County, Calif.
:)