Are Horse Lovers Made or Do They Just Come That Way?

Sometimes I think parents have only themselves to blame for their little horse-crazy children.  I mean, what do they expect if they read them “Black Beauty” when they are very small? 

In my case I think it was a perfect storm of factors.  My dad grew up an Oklahoma cowboy, and some of my earliest memories are of being spellbound by stories of his Cheyenne and Arapahoe friends and all the horse trading and riding and ranching his family did.  “Cheyenne Fannie” was a frequent horse-trading visitor, and when Black Kettle’s little grandson died dad told me how he was given a Christian burial, but his little white pony was shot and buried with him so he’d have something to ride in Heaven.  Whole train cars full of Appaloosas would come into Watonga straight from the Nez Perce lands, and dad and his older brother Britt would buy and break them for resale, their spectacular coloring making them valuable amongst the usual bay and chestnut cow ponies. 

My grandma had grown up at the turn of the century and as a small child living on an isolated farm her only friend was a weanling filly mule named Goldie.  Goldie and little Flossie were inseperable, even to the extent that Flossie coaxed Goldie up the incredibly tall, narrow and dark stairs to the second floor bedrooms and all the way onto the bed.  I always wondered how she got her down!  Flossie got a whipping for that but she said it was worth it.   I ate their stories up, and then they read me “Black Beauty”,  so between that and genetics it was all over as far as my mania for horses was concerned. 

We had neighbors with cows and horses and I got in trouble for following them when their weekend trail rides passed through our woodland logging roads.  My cousin Amy was the richest person I knew, from my point of view as she had an evil little Shetland appropriately named Frisky.  Frisky regularly did one-eighties, usually managing to sling us into the thickets of sawtooth briars, but neither our constant scratches nor scrapes could deter us.  Amy’s father was a sawmiller and owned a giant Percheron logging mule named Bertie May.  Bert was a frustrated mother and cows with fresh calves had to be protected or she would drive the calf from its mother and guard it from the anxious cow!  She was also a Houdini who frequently escaped the pasture, there being no fence able to stand up to her sheer size and strength. 

One of my very first rides was with two of my little cousins on Bert.  Once I was on her the ground seemed an awful long ways away, and I’m the one clinging with my very toes to her well sprung sides as she good-naturedly toted us around on her day off. 

I couldn't leave you without showing you last night's sunset.  Maybe all that color is a precourser to the ice and snow we're forcasted to get?  We can only hope, although I'm starting to envision little coats on the goaty girls.  A trip to Petsmart to see what they have in the way of large dog coats may be on for today!  They probably don't need them, but when I see them all naked next to Willow who's wearing a blanket for the first time in two years  (last winter just was too mild to even be called that), I have to admit I worry a little for them.  They've plenty of hay to snuggle down in but I bet they'd appreciate their own blankets.