anecdote from Denny Emerson

Highly unrelated to my life right now, as the last time I was on a horse was in November, but this excerpt from Denny Emerson's blog made me lolz:

" “Herding cats” is a pretty good description of the job of Cross Country Warm Up Steward, my official title for today. Luckily, Susan and Van Firth will be there to keep me from messing up too badly, as we coax, coerce, badger and nudge riders from the safety of the warm up area down to the Jaws of the Starting Box. Some of them go cheerily to their fate, like lemmings off the cliff into the North Sea, or where ever it is they drop from, but others wiggle and squirm, and need more Gestapo like measures. “Number Eight, we are deeply and sincerely sorry that you are only twenty years old, and your coach is not here to hold your little hand and watch you jump the warm-up X thirty three more times, while Dauntless Dobbin gets covered with more lather than if he`d run around Badminton, but you actually do have only 24 seconds left before your scheduled start time, and we are already fifty three minutes behind because fence 12 got knocked into the Head Of The Lake, and the chainsaw artist had to carve another life size Armadillo before we could resume, and the Technical Delegate`s golf cart ran out of gas before he could approve it, and you know he`s too unfit to walk there to inspect it, since the last time he actually rode a horse was 1979, so we had to find a cart replacement, SO GET OVER THERE!” "