Mostly Horses and a Bit of Bull

Since we’ve been making a few highway miles lately, I’ve had some time to whip out the old iPod and type away. Mostly I get distracted by the scenery, so really all I put together was a list of things to write about. However, as I look around at the scenery, my mind is free to toss around some rough copy type work. Since my fingers don’t participate in this step of the creative process, the material I think of is mostly forgotten. It just bounces around my brain for a while before it escapes out one of my ears.

If you think this doesn’t sound like a very useful process, I would have to tell you:

It is not.

But anyway, my fingers are participating now, so it’s full steam ahead.

Our road trips lately have been dedicated to looking at bulls and horses.

Bulls are just an annual expense around here. We have a bull herd that stays around the fifteen to twenty head size. It’s technically more than we’d need, but Murphy’s law dictates that some will not pass breeding tests, some will be injured, and some will lay in the shade while the cow herd flirts futilely in the valley (I’m looking at you, 30E).

I don’t know if it was Murphy’s law acting out on us earlier this winter, but I witnessed a pretty gut-wrenching scenario involving the whole bull herd, and it made me grateful to be only doing routine bull shopping...

We often winter the bulls on a quarter of land a half mile from the yard. It’s a pretty flat piece of hay land, but there’s a large slough in the middle. At one end of the slough is a bush, where we put feed out; at the other end of the slough is a dugout where we chop a hole in the ice for the bulls to drink at.

This winter ended up dumping a bunch of snow on us, so much at once, in fact, that a couple of the bulls got stranded in the midst of high drifts that had collected in the cattails. We couldn’t get there with the tractor, so we had to go in on foot, stamping down a bit of a trail for them to follow out.

Strong winds seemed to shift the snow every other day, and no sooner would we push a long trail to the bulls than it would be blown in with hard drifts. That got old quickly, so we planned to move the bulls home, but ended up taking one more round of hay out there so they could stay out of the yard a few more days. As we wound our way across the pasture to the slough, we stopped at the dugout to chop the hole open. The herd was already trudging their way across the ice, so Dad sent the dog out to encourage them to trot up a little more smartly.

This was early in our winter, before we had any wicked cold snaps. The thin layer of ice was well insulated by the heavy snow, and hadn’t had much opportunity to freeze thicker. The bulls had ventured across before, but usually they were strung out in a long line.

More than 25,000 pounds of bull came trotting across the dugout at once. Dad had stopped the dog, but it was too late; the herd was bunched tight and knew the shortest path to the tractor.

I began to back away when water started splashing up out of the hole I had chopped.

As far as thirty-second stints of anxiety go, it was one of the most potent of my life, and my stomach truly had the urge to part with my last meal. I was once chased by an angry mother cow in a bald pasture, and even when I was mid-air in a free fall after having tripped, with the cow inches from me, I had less sickening anxiety than I did when those bulls came a running. Like that time, however, I called upon all the heavenly host to help. And the heavenly host delivered. The heavenly host is gracious like that.

I had to look away as the ice began to crack and shudder more rapidly, and I kept looking away and back again, always tempted to watch the train wreck. From the tractor, Dad kept watching. He saw the ice flex down more than a foot, and he looked a bit like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” painting.

And then they were across. Safe. And Dad and I were still looking horrified, because we’re both worst-case-scenario-thinkers and one of the worst-case-scenarios of our inner dwellings almost got loose in reality.

We turned the tractor around and led the bulls home.

Anyway, that crises was averted, and we’ve gone out and scouted the next generation of herd sires, so we should be done with that for the year. If we run into a wreck in breeding season, that’s not the time to drive around and look at replacements. In that situation, we start making phone calls and buying bulls sight unseen.

A homely bull in the hand is worth more than two prizes laying in the bush.

The going price for bulls this year is in around that $5000 mark for yearlings. We haven’t had to go to a bull auction for a few years now, as the people we buy from offer their bulls through private treaty (they price them and we just go to their farm and pick). It’s nice to have the guesswork taken out of it. At an auction, if you need one bull, you’ll pick out a handful of bulls that you like and hopefully one will be in your price range. It’s more stressful, but it also releases some very exciting chemicals in your brain. Every time you raise your hand to bid, it’s like cranking a slot machine.

Back in 2007 (I think), Dad and I bought two purebred Angus heifers for me. When the hammer came down at the auction, it felt like we won.

But I don’t know which one was more disappointing. The one that bloated and died after producing only two calves (a bull which we kept and used, and a heifer that never bred), or the one that freeloaded for a couple of years, not producing any calves before taking that final trailer ride.

It was not a winning investment, in any case, and kept me away from auctions until the fall of 2012, when Dad and I went to a horse auction.

Now I must leave the bull-buying excuse behind and admit that most of our travelling lately has been in pursuit of horses...

Back at that 2012 auction I mentioned, we just went as spectators and came home with two horses. These days, we go in need of a horse and come back empty handed. We are way more scrupulous about buying horses these days, but then, they do seem to cost a lot more now.

In 2012, we had idly walked through the barns, then grabbed a catalogue and sat in the bleachers as the auction began. We flipped to the section of young horses and started picking out what we thought would be nice-looking youngsters. I had spotted a fancy red dun filly in the back of the book, but Dad pointed out that her demeanour looked a little high-headed. I agreed, and Dad flipped to the page that showed his pick, a plainer and calmer-looking bay dun filly.

When she came in the ring, Dad asked me quickly,

“What do you think she’s worth?” I had no idea, but several youngsters had gone through already, and I compared her to the plainer, cheaper ones.

“Eight hundred.”

It turned into a real team effort, buying that filly. Dad leaned over to Mom and whispered, “She says we should go to eight hundred on her.”

I thought we had been doing hypothetical analysis, but I wasn’t going to jeopardize a hypothetical chance to get a real horse, so I stayed quiet.

Mom did the bidding for us. By making Mom do the physical bidding, we ensure we have someone to blame should we have buyers regret set in later. Just a little pro-tip for any auction goers.

Anyway, when the bid fell on $800 it was not ours, so we told Mom to go one more.

We took the little long-yearling filly home for $820.

She turned out to be one of those rare auction purchases that was worth her weight in gold.

She had her shortcomings as a ranch horse, but I trained her myself and used her in 4-H. She just had the sweetest, most patient temperament; I put the first rides on her in the fall as she was rising four, and by the following summer, she could nail a pattern class at a show, and even beat some seasoned show horses in a few. Never offered any type of shenanigans, and even as a very green filly, I could ride away from and towards home on a loose rein; something some of our seasoned horses have issues with (I’m looking at you, Barb). She had a really special kind of mind.

I ended up selling her in the fall of her fourth year, as I was heading off to college. I learned a lot from her, and she helped out with tuition.

That was our good auction sale purchase that day, but if you recall, I said we brought home two.

Dad didn’t want to be waiting two years to ride a horse, so he had his eye on a sixteen-hand (that translates to quite tall) quiet-looking four-year-old buckskin that had already been broke and ridden out in the pasture. Back then, $2500 bought you a decent started four-year-old.

But it also bought Chewy.

Like our first purchase at that auction, Chewy also had a special mind. As we got to know him, we suspected more and more that it was one that lacked oxygen when he was foaled. Dad thought he was buying a big, quiet horse, but he didn’t realize he was quite that dopey.

When we got him home, we discovered he had a drooling problem, and we feared that he had been drugged into his dopey state.

A couple of days of drooling passed and we hoped that he was just drooling because he was losing his baby teeth. Do horses normally drool when loosing their teeth? I do not know. But Chewy drooled. It’s not that this feature was a deal breaker; just one of those hindsight red flags.

When one works with horses, one introduces new things and teaches the horse to understand and accept them.

I think what happens with Chewy is that he accepts that he does not understand things. And he likes to do this process at a slow walk, if he must move at all.

Dad was so aghast at the amount of effort required on his behalf to get Chewy to move that he gave up.

We ended up donating him to my dad’s brother, who trained him to pull and has found a use for him as a choring horse. I think the horse he gets teamed with ends up pulling the hay rack and Chewy, but at least he does his part to prevent runaways.

Since Chewy, we have stayed our hands at auction sales.

For the most part.

We were tempted back into the casino of bleachers by a sale in the city early last fall. I’ve been on the market for a young, green horse, and I discovered one listed in an upcoming sale. I did my homework on this horse. I found it listed in the sale it had been bought at as a two year old, I talked to the owner, then talked to the owner of its sire, then snooped the land of Facebook for every picture and video of it, it’s parents, and its siblings. I did far less thorough research when a strange man offered Sister and I a free private tour of Nottingham, back in our Euro-touring days.

Anyway.

Dad and I went to the viewing for the sale and checked the horse out. He was roughly what I had expected, so I spent most of the evening pondering what I thought an acceptable price for a horse like that was.

Dad was also scouting out a horse for himself, because it would be a shame not to have a crank on the ol’ auction slots after travelling there, anyway...

The preview was the day prior to the sale, but they were limiting attendees to everything, so the sale was streamed online. Online auctions are a revolution of a method, because you can get all the endorphins of a real auction without any of the stress of travelling and socializing.

After a long ponder, I decided on what I thought the horse was worth to me. Mom, Dad, and I gathered round the laptop and scrolled through the auction lots. I found my horse and placed my bid.

For a whole hour, I owned that horse. Mine was the top bid for so long, I started arranging the hauling in my head, naming him, and deciding which pen to stick him in.

Then his lot came up, and the bids rattled up... up.. up... until they stopped just on the other side of mine. I was being tested. One more bid could make him mine; all I had to do was click in that little bid button...

But I had set my price, and I thought it was probably a good idea to stay firm on it. I walked away without the horse, and without the potential buyer's regret.

Meanwhile, Dad had fallen in like (it wasn’t quite love) with a little bay roan mare. She was a already a seasoned pasture horse, so he had spent a lot of time talking himself into paying a high price for her.

“I sold my last horse for x amount, so I should be able to spend that to replace him, right?”

Regardless, he swung low, just to test the waters. As soon as he entered his price, the bids went up right to it. That meant someone had put a reserve bid in that was higher. At this point, the name of the gamble was a thrilling, ‘how high can I bid this other guy up until I get stuck with the horse?’ He entered in a higher bid. Once again, the numbers ticked up to his bid. He still didn’t have it. A third time, he entered a price. This time, the numbers only ticked up a little. He had the winning bid.

“Oh no!” He said, “That’s it! I’ve got her!”

But the game was still on, because the person whose bid he had wheedled up probably saw that they’d lost the lead. The numbers went up again, and Dad did a little more wheedling. “She’s a nice mare,” Dad said, “the guy deserves to get paid well for her. I don’t think I want her for that price, but I’ll bid her up.” The numbers stopped going up again; Dad had the top bid.

And then nothing happened. No one else was bidding on her.

“Oh no!” Dad said, “Where’d that guy go?? Doesn’t he want her?!”

And he was the anxious owner of a little bay roan mare for a long hour.

When the time came for live bidding, Dad was relieved to see the numbers tick past his reserve bid.

He was safe from the buyer's regret.

But we still didn’t have a horse.

In the end, we thought it was just as well to have come away empty handed. You just never can trust what some people bring to an auction, and this particular auction group had been clear on their stance: it was buyer beware.

Most of our horses hail from Kijiji and private deals. You win some, you lose some there, too.

This summer, I found a sweet little filly on Kijiji. She had a dark chestnut coat with a flaxen mane and tail and a nice straight blaze all the way down her face. We were told she had a wire cut on her back pastern, but that it was healing and she was okay to go as long as I kept putting some iodine solution on it.

We got home with my purchase and began to play with her a bit, working on getting her to pick up her feet. Since the sore foot bothered her more, we picked up all the other ones first, to gain her trust. I was pleased to find that the filly was handling it all very well. She had a good attention span, learned quickly, and didn’t get worked up. When we got to the last foot, we found a wound that was not so easy to fix as a wire cut.

I’m not ripping on the seller here: she seemed an honest lady, but she was just treating the wound by splashing the solution on and had never picked up the foot.

We got the foot up and found large splits in the hoof, on each heel; it looked as if the whole hoof was sloughing off. The supposed wire cut looked less like a cut up close, and more like an infection had surfaced and broken through the skin. As we checked her out more thoroughly, we found other, smaller sores on her that looked similar, and even a strange, mostly-healed abscess-looking thing in her mouth. It was mighty suspicious and definitely not good. I phoned the local horse vet to get her opinion, but I already knew I was going to be asking the previous owner about her return policies.

The vet checked out some pictures I sent her and confirmed that the foot didn’t look so good. The sores and the abscess were, she agreed, mighty suspicious. I was a little embarrassed about this filly I had purchased, but since I was on the phone with her anyway, I thought I might as well ask about another fault I had found with the filly post-purchase.

“You’re going to think I bought a real lemon here,” I started, and she laughed, “but what’s your opinion on parrot-mouthed horses?”

She said they could get better or way worse, but that she always shies away from them.

Good to know for future reference; I added that to the list of things I'd learned that day.

Fortunately, the previous owner took the filly back no problem that same day. It wasn’t that far of a drive, I got the money back, and I didn’t have any vet bills.

In short, we weren’t out much for all the learning we got to do.

On to the next purchase...

Last fall, in a rigmarole of events that is better related in person than posted on the internet, a small herd of horses from the reserve ended up on our new (and therefore not currently fenced) hay land. We were grateful they had cut into the field, because after another half mile down the road they would have gone past our horses, grazing in a little temporary paddock of rebar and string. This fence keeps them in normally, but I certainly wouldn’t count on it when the call of the wild is made.

Anyway, we ended up chasing the rogue herd up an alley to the co-op pasture corrals. The herd was very fast, very difficult to direct, and they were wanting to funnel into the corner that led there, so that’s what we did. It was a fast-paced adventure, for sure, but mostly I’m mentioning it because amongst all the other horses, and somehow managing to keep up, were two miniature pony mares with foals.

They were wild-eyed and vibrating by the time they were secured in the corrals. Now don’t worry, we didn’t peel one of those off and keep it. I just mention it because when the pasture manager was going past our yard with the load of horses the next day (he knew the various owners so did them a favour and returned them), he stopped for a chat. Mom went out to talk to him and looked in on the horses. She commented on the cuteness of the minis, and mentioned that we were interested in getting a pony for the kiddos.

When the pasture manager dropped the ponies off, he gave the owner my dad’s number, and that is how we came to buy Butters, the four-year-old, nine-hand-high buckskin pony mare. She’s a beaut.

Butters has been a part of my ‘to write about’ list for some time now. She is the main character of four titles. They are:

• Butters the very good pony

• Butters the very bad pony

• Butters the very good sled pony

• Butters the very bad sled pony

Here we go.

We bought Butters in September. She was supposedly not handled very much, and the guy said she had never been ridden. This was a good thing, as the guy typically trains ponies to buck, then sells them as rodeo stock for kid events.

I’ve never handled a pony before, but she seemed to take pressure well, and for a couple hundred bucks, I thought we might as well give her a try. We loaded her up and brought her home.

I spent a few hours the next day getting her to pick up her feet well enough for me to give her a trim. For a pony that hadn’t had her feet done, she progressed really well.

Butters was a very good pony.

She was really twitchy with any contact anywhere behind her ribs. Slowly, she got better with me around her rump, but was still really sensitive about her flank. In case you’re wondering, and I wish someone had told me this at the time, that is a bit of a red flag.

I spent the next few weeks going out every morning and working with Butters. She got better and better to be around, was really responsive and willing, and wasn’t afraid of any ropes and tarps I threw her way.

Butters was a very good pony.

Within the first couple of days we had her, we let the kids sit on her as I led her around. I got her saddled not long after, and led them around on that. Butters was a champ, totally fine to meander wherever with whomever on her back. I was even letting the oldest nephew learn to steer her around as I just walked beside.

Butters was a very good pony.

But then one day I was out distributing salt to the herds in various pastures. Both of my brothers and their families were out for a visit, so Dad decided to saddle up Butters the very good pony and take the grandsons for a little ride.

I was not there. I only heard about Dad leading the oldest grandson around. I heard how he was leading Butters and holding Grandson to help him balance. I heard how the saddle was slipping sideways slowly, so Dad stopped the carousel and pulled it back straight.

Then I heard about how Butters the very good pony transformed into Butters the very bad pony.

Without warning, Butters launched into a bona fide bronc buck. She put her head down, jumped in the air, and threw her back heels high. She looked like a real, professional rodeo bronc, but in miniature.

Nephew didn’t stand a chance.

Fortunately, he managed to fall in a somersaulting sort of way off the side, so that by the time he made contact with the dirt, his head landed softly, his torso a little harder, and his legs with the greatest force.

Once Butters the very bad pony had him off, she just stopped and stood there like she was a very good pony. Something about Dad and the way he had cranked the saddle probably triggered some old memories... memories of flank straps and bronc-busting kiddos. When that guy told us she had never been ridden, he probably forgot to mention that he meant past eight seconds.

Dad told his grandson that he’d better get back on, and he didn’t even question it. This was either because he was very brave and obedient, or because he has no past reference for what bucking is, and therefore all he knew was some jolting confusion and the cloud of dust as he landed. They went a few more cautious steps, then put Butters the very bad pony away.

I would not have believed Butters could buck like that if I didn’t see it myself, which I did. When I heard what she did to my nephew, I went out and had some words with her.

Since then, Butters has been relearning the meaning of flank pressure. She is quick to catch on, and will now just stop when I tighten a flank rope on her. Old habits die hard, though, and we won’t be trusting her so easily now.

Since riding Butters turned out to be a bit of a perilous enterprise, I decided to try her out for pulling this winter. I don’t have a pony harness, so I rigged up her saddle with some extra straps and rings, attached some long ropes to her halter, and got her driving around. She’s a quick study, that Butters, and in just a few minutes, she felt ready to pull a sled.

Just in case things got hairy, I started her pulling me in her pen. She handled it really well, so I let her out into the yard, where there was smooth, packed snow to slide on. Sometimes she got a bit anxious about the sled, but never did a real spook, and was always in control.

I was pleased to discover that Butters was a very good sled pony.

I took her out quite a few times and she just got better and better. She was easy to steer, and would walk, trot, and lope out willingly. I even got Sister-In-Law to drive her around as she was so well behaved and trustworthy.

Butters was a very good sled pony.

I had driven her around quite a few times already, and I went out again one day to enjoy a nice little trot around the yard with her. She was frisky, but I hooked her right up and took her out, because Butters was a very good sled pony.

She trotted out pretty briskly away from the barn yard, but I wasn’t too concerned. I was sure she’d settle in quickly, because Butters was a very good sled pony.

She did not. When I turned her around and headed back towards the barnyard, she seized her moment and bolted. Butters was a very bad sled pony.

For a critter with legs not much more than a foot long, Butters sure can give’r. She wasn’t bolting because she was spooking, but rather because she is, to use the technical terminology, a Hell-bent turd.

So off we went zipping towards the barnyard, my reserve pony with her makeshift, hybrid saddle-harness pulling an ancient calf sled that was broke in half and had no back stop. In other words, it was real cheap entertainment. Mom certainly thought so, as she watched from the living room window.

Before Butters the very bad sled pony managed to shipwreck me by going back through the gate to her pen, I was able to pull her around in a wide circle. There was no stopping her yet, but despite her determination, she could not run straight while her nose was weighed to the right. I had her careening back towards the house, where I would have more places to turn her that weren’t into fences, machinery, and buildings. Before I was clear, however, I had to steer us through the gap by our fuel tanks. I gave her a little too much slack in the hopes that she wouldn’t run into the tanks, and instead of continuing on the beaten path towards the house, she hooked a sharp right, along the path to the hopper bottom bins. It was a path fraught with things to run into, but all the corners worked out in my favour, and I drifted around behind Butters, safe. That path led us back around to her gate, and as proof of her being a turd turd and not a frightened turd, she slowed to a trot as she came to the spot where we normally unhitched.

I couldn’t permit such miscreant ways, so I yelled at Butters the very bad sled pony, and we carried on. She went a few strides at a nice trot like she’s supposed to, but then bolted off again. This time, as we came to the fuel tanks, I kept her going on towards the house, though she very nearly ducked around towards the bins again.

We skittered past the house and Butters dove onto the lane that goes around the circle of lawn in the yard. We haven’t been keeping that lane ploughed, so she had to work harder to pull me through it. I thought that was a good thing, as it would slow her down. I didn’t account for the tractor ruts that were there.

As we’d made the corner, Butters had pulled that dirty old trick of slowing to make the corner, allowing slack in the rope, then shooting off at a ninety-degree angle to me. We always used to pull that trick when we towed sleds or tubes behind the snowmobiles, but I didn’t think Butters knew it.

I was still in the recovery position for that (which involved my legs being splayed in front of me and raised higher than my ears), when Butters, who was turning out to be a very bad and very cunning sled pony, dumped my rig neatly into a tractor rut.

I was rattled off to the side, and for a few moments, I was somehow riding in the sled (though much of me was dragging on the outside) while the sled was turned completely on its side. Somehow I managed to flail in such a way that the sled fell mostly back down, though it was still sunk at an angle into the rut.

And on Butters ran.

Butters the very bad sled pony.

We did another loop at the full bolt, though it wasn’t quite as fast anymore, then one at a skittering trot.

After that, Butters was good and puffed. Her little legs were no longer on board with her naughty schemes, and she slowed down. I let her walk for a while, then rested her at the house, then took her back to the barn and put her away. I figured she had exerted herself enough for one day.

Since then, she’s had a couple spats of ill-will, trying to get her way, but none as exciting as that first bolt. I think she figured out that it was not that fun for her, which is sort of too bad.

Because I found it thrilling.

My final purchase of the year was a sorrel colt I named Rooster. I bought him in October, after having spent a lot of the summer and fall searching for a new horse. For some reason, the price of horses seems to have gone way up this year. Two years ago, Dad and I sold quiet, broke, seasoned ranch horses for the same price that people now seem to want for their four-year-old green-broke horses. We’re having a hard time wrapping our heads around that, so instead of paying that insane price for a riding horse, I’ve opted to pay an also insane price for a colt I can’t ride for another three years. There’s my business sense kicking in.

While Dad and I were browsing the riding horses at that auction sale last fall, I was also being blown away at the price of colts. Last year, weanlings (from the same breeder, with the same bloodlines, and at the same annual sale) were mostly going around the $400 mark. Cheap ones were $200, and $800 got you some with fancy colouring.

This year, those colts were bringing $1500-$3000.

I can’t figure that one out, but it’s clear we missed the boat. By those prices, I was happy with what I paid for Rooster.

I first saw Rooster back in June, when I took my mare and colt up to have another date with a stud (not the same as last time). The owner of the stud had just a couple mares of his own, and one of those mares had a big red colt that positively towered over my little colt, Chicken (I have renamed him, try to keep up), despite being a few days younger. He looked really big and strong, but his front knees kind of pointed outward, one more than the other, so we didn’t want to up and buy him just then.

Dad and I told the owner that we’d be interested in the colt, so he agreed to let us know when he was weaned, halter broke, and had his feet trimmed. That suited us fine, as we’d learned that one should pick up a horse’s feet for a look before buying.

October rolled around and he gave us a call that the colt was ready to go. We drove up for a look at him, and we were so tired of our fruitless efforts in search of a horse that we could have written a cheque on the way.

When we got there, the colt was much as could be expected, growing kind of lanky and gutty, but still looking big, especially compared to his dainty pen mate. His legs were still turned outward, and one was still worse than the other.

But we bought him anyway.

It was the strangest thing; all this time, we had been thinking of Rooster as the big red colt. That’s kind of why we bought him is that he looked so much bigger than Chicken. But then we took him off the trailer here at home and let him get introduced to Chicken. We were amazed to see that Chicken was, in fact, taller. And since Chicken hadn’t had a bout of worms, he was also, in fact, heavier.

So I bought a small red colt with crooked legs. At least Chicken had company.

For a couple months, I had resigned myself to Rooster having a crooked leg. Doing some research, I discovered that it’s normal for colts to have turned-out front legs. As their chests thicken, their elbows will be pushed out and the legs will turn straight. I discovered that a colt with very turned out legs could be expected to thicken into a wider-chested horse. This was comforting, but the articles I found didn’t say anything about one leg being more turned than the other. I suspected that his legs would, indeed, rotate, but that one would probably always be more turned out.

But lo! I went out one afternoon and, just out of curiosity, checked out Rooster’s front legs. I hadn’t bothered looking for a while, so I was pleased to find that I could no longer tell which leg it was that had been more skewed!

Both colts are growing into fine young gentlemen. They have their stinkery moments, but are mostly very well behaved.

I put them in the barn every night, and if I’m late getting them out in the morning, one of them is banging on the door with a front foot, demanding attention. They get bored in confinement and I’ve had to hide away all the things they can pick up and drag around. I once spent half an hour digging through their straw to recover the halters they had dragged around, and one of the crinkly sandbags I had in there to desensitize them ended up ripped open. I also had a small lamp in the barn so that they could see at least a little bit at night. Had.

First, they unscrewed the lightbulb enough to turn it off, so I hung it up high before they could break it, but the cord still had to come down to the outlet. One morning I found it had been unplugged in such an unceremonious way that one prong was bent sideways.

Not long after that, I found it had been unplugged in such a way that the plug-in was nowhere to be found, and a couple inches of cord was chewed down to the wire. I sure hope they unplugged it before they chewed through to the copper.

Personally, I suspect Chicken is behind these misdemeanours. He’s a mouthy youngster. I have a sweater with an elastic cord along the bottom that can be used to cinch the seam tight. When I wear it to trim Chicken’s hooves, he always reaches around, grabs the bauble, pulls it tight, and releases it to snap me in the rear.

He’s a real charmer.

Here's some pictures of them both from October and February

After hearing about all these equines of ours, you might be thinking, “Okay, that’s enough horses now, you hoarders.”

But the ages of our horses are roughly: twenty-three, sixteen, ten, nine, nine, nine, one, and one.

There’s a gap there between the nine-year-olds and coming-yearlings where we should have some young horses getting miles to replace the older. If one of the good horses gets sore or goes lame, we haven’t got a really good one to replace it, and if there’s family around that wants to help with round-up, then all of a sudden all the horses are used.

There’s also the problem of my horse, Mack, being by far the best horse to use. The other two that Dad and I typically ride are Bill and Barb. Barb is able bodied but not very able minded, and Bill is able minded but not very able bodied. Dad and I sometimes have a hard time getting along with either of them, but we can’t both ride Mack, and in order to put miles on the lesser horses, Mack often stays home altogether. I also feel bad driving a Camaro when Dad’s stuck with a jalopy. So Bill and Barb it is.

Bill may not be the quickest-footed horse to have around, but he sure is a stalwart friend. Dad rode him a fair bit last summer before switching to Barb, and he was glad he had him when he unwittingly rode him through a wasps nest. That wouldn’t be so bad a thing, except that the herd of cows he was trailing through a bush had just knocked it down and trampled it seconds before, and the wasps were looking for something to blame. Quiet, dependable, unflappable Bill was suddenly coming unhinged, and Dad had no clue why.

Bill began to switch his tail, kick, stamp, sweep sideways, and try to run. Dad ended up having to get off. They were away from the nest at that point, but a few wasps were still in pursuit. From the ground, Dad saw the little bugs landing on poor Bill, and he tried to help him out by swatting them when they landed.

Unfortunately, Bill’s perspective on the whole thing was that his rider had all of a sudden, without warrant and without warning, started to beat him in the strangest and most stinging manner. He was aghast at what could have brought on such cruel punishment, but the only one around was his rider, so it was definitely him inflicting it.

So when Dad got off and walked around poor, rattled Bill to swat a wasp on his back leg, we really can’t blame Bill for how he reacted.

“Why are you being so mean to me, you psycho?” Bill must have thought. “I’m done with this garbage, mister. Don’t you touch me!”

And then Dad reached out to smack a wasp on Bill’s back leg, probably around the same time that it bit Bill.

Bill lifted his leg very precisely, and swung it back to clap Dad on his leg. An eye for an eye, as it were.

Probably realizing that he had done a very naughty thing in his desperation, he then left Dad in the bush and trotted away.

To his credit, Bill did not go far. Perhaps the wasp bites, still stinging, were proof to him that Dad was not the one causing his pain. If I was Bill and I had just kicked Dad, though, I would not have stopped.

It’s even more to his credit, as I was not there for the whole ordeal, and Bill resisted the temptation to run over the hill to get to Barb.

Dad wasn’t mad at Bill, because I think we all can agree that stepping into a trampled wasp nest is not likely to bring the best out of anyone, and Bill hadn’t even kicked him that hard.

I am certain things would have gotten more western if he’d been riding Barb.

But even though Bill served him well in that situation, Barb proved herself more useful when we were trying to push the herd through a fence we'd stapled to the ground (in lieu of a gate). Even though she doesn't listen well a lot of the time, she's quick and sure-footed when we have to peel after something.

Anyway, that’s why we’re in pursuit of another horse. We’d like to get something able bodied and able minded wrapped up in a single horse.

Also, I might as well throw it out there, buying horses is heckin’ exciting stuff even if it might represent a tiny bit of a gambling problem that farmers and ranchers all seem to have in some way or another.

At least we don't gamble at casinos, I guess.

Heaven forbid we come away with some actual legal tender from such gambling pursuits.