That’s what my neighbor will say to me when I see her at her place of work.

When I was a teenager the “Hood” was something you looked under when you wanted to check the oil in your car.  Or it was what you pulled up from your jacket to stay warm. Then it became the fan above your stove, or something you placed on your horse’s head and neck to keep him warm after you shaved all his hair off.  Today it seems to be short for your “Neighborhood.”  A lot of words from years ago have new meanings.  Pot was something you cooked with, not something you smoked.  Seems weird to me.

Now the “hood” I want to talk about is one of the old-fashioned ones, the one you wear on your head.  I liken it to blinders on horse harness.  Seriously?!  One is to keep you warm and one is to keep the horse from spooking from something coming up behind him.  Well now, that’s just my point.

No we really don’t have a side or rear view like a horse, but the hood will do the same thing to us as the blinders will do for him.  You have your hood up and you are trying to stay warm, but you really don’t have any idea of what is going on along side of you or behind you.  This can be dangerous.

Sometimes I think, I think too much.  But it comes down to staying safe.

We don’t even realize how much we take in while we are working with our horses.  We are always scanning our surroundings.  Okay, now be honest –  When you were first learning to drive, and a plastic bag blew in front of your car, didn’t you grab the steering wheel tighter waiting for the car to spook?  Okay so don’t be honest and make me look crazy.  I think people who ride horses are more pro-active drivers.  And I do know that people drive the way they ride.  People who do sliding stops with their horses will also wait to brake their cars.  We have a tendency to look around our turns.  If you are into speed on a horse, guess what you are into with your car.

Enough of that.

So when it’s cold, yes even in Florida, I put my hood up on my jacket.  But what I have noticed, especially in a field with horses, I don’t want it up.  I want to see what is going on around me.  If one horse is going to chase another into me, or run me over, I don’t want to wait until I’m picking myself up off the ground to be aware of all that.  If a horse I am leading is going to spook, I want to see it coming.  And there is always the chance that someone is going to mug you for what you are carrying at the time.

In self-defense courses they will always tell you to be aware of your surroundings.  I think they learned that from being around horses.

So be wise grasshopper when working around horses.

See you around the hood, or in our case, see around the hood.