ANIMAL RAMBLE WARNING

If you’ve been reading this for a while you already know I love animals. 

When we lived on the farm (I was about 13 to 15)we had plenty of them but none of them were pets or for pleasure.  If they weren’t edible we didn’t have them.

Our neighbor, however, had a horse.  I don’t think they ever did anything with it.  It was a dapple grey Tennessee Walking horse named Sally. 

I would take little knotty apples or a couple of carrots and go sit and wait for her to come see what I had.  I left the treats where I had been sitting when I had to leave.  It took several visits before she came to me.

I asked permission from the neighbors and they said do whatever you want.  We had a bridle in our barn but no saddle.

Apparently Sally was lonesome and soon let me put the bridle on her and lead her to a rock or stump so I could get on.  She even cooperated so I could open and close gates without getting off. 

We usually just walked the cow paths for a while and then went home. 

On two occasions we did have exciting adventures.

NO. 1  

We had a barn for beef cattle, it had three walls and a hay rick on the first floor.  It had a hay mow full of bales of hay we threw down into the hay rick in the winter for the cattle to eat.

In the fall Sally and I had walked in one end of the missing side of the first floor and out the other  end.

In the spring it didn’t work.  I woke up on the ground with a horse blowing her breath into my face. 

Between cow tracks in mud and cow patties the ground had been built up so that my head hit a beam on the way out of the barn. 

I don’t think I was unconscious very long but I was very happy to see that Sally waited for me.  I forget how I got back on her but I remember we walked home carefully.

My parents never heard this story.

NO. 2 

I knew very little about horses, like the fact that if you squeezed harder with your legs it was a signal to go faster.

My Father was sitting on the front porch, a common evening thing to do at our house.  I didn’t have time to go very far before dark so I was just going to ride in the edge of the field across the road.

Being a little nervous that my Father was watching I probably tried to sit up straighter and must have squeezed  - she took off like at a fast clip and I squeezed harder to hold on.

I saw the drainage ditch coming and squeezed harder – even wrapped some mane around my hand. 

We cleared the drainage ditch somewhat gracefully. Then there was the guy wire to a pole – we cleared that with a little less grace. 

Then she turned to cross the paved road jumping the ditch, always before we crossed at a nice sensible walk.  Her feet slipped this way and that but she managed to jump the ditch on the other side.

She came to a stop where two fences formed a V, breathing hard.  I wasn’t breathing so easy myself.

She had never jumped anything with me before. I was amazed to still be on top of her.  I think she lost some of her mane.

I waited for her to calm down and backed her out of her corner.  I walked her back to her field slowly.

When I got back home my Father was still on the porch.  I waited for his words (lecture?).  He just asked if that was me on the horse.  I just said yes.  We weren’t big on communication.  He did shake his head when I said yes.

So that is the horse ramble.  Sally got sold to a man who saw her jump with my brother riding her.  He wanted to make a jumper out of her.  I don’t think he had much training to do.

Today was the first round of chemo, two to follow, then another PET scan the end of Sept.

We got some rain today, used the windshield wipers in the car. 

later….