Horse Adventures

This is one of our family horses, Trigger, so named by his previous owner because he somewhat resembled the famed horse ridden by Roy Rogers.

Trigger is my personal favorite of our horses. He’s never moody or indifferent. Don’t get me wrong — like most of the horses I’ve interacted with, eating is his number one priority, so he’ll almost always be head down standing in the pasture. But if you wander into the pasture he’ll usually mosey on over to see what you’re doing. And he has a playful streak.

I was out fixing horse fencing a few years ago (more on that later) which requires a number of tools, including pry bar, saw, hammer, drill, clamp, and supplies like nails and screws, and, of course, lumber. I sat everything down and turned to pry the broken board off of the fence, and Trigger wandered up. I said hello, he looked innocently at me, then, calm as you please, bent down, picked up the bag of nails with his teeth, turned and trotted away.

He dropped the bag as soon as I called his name, gave me a look over his shoulder, and then wandered off.

Much as I like Trigger, though, he creates the most work. In the picture you’ll note him looking over the fence. We have several acres of fine, fenced in pasture, but he really thinks that the grass on the other side is better. He’s constantly creating extra work for me, because he’ll lean with the full force of his 1800 pounds (he’s 16.1 hands — big horse) against the top fence rail just to reach the grass on the other side. Fence posts can’t take that kind of strain for a long period of time before they break. He’ll also do the same thing with the bottom rail, depending upon his mood, I suppose.

Every spring I head out to fix up a year’s worth of partly cracked or sagging boards, although from time to time Trigger or one of the others will create a problem that has to be dealt with instantly. This weekend it was so nice that I ended up spending several hours Saturday on fence duty. I probably have ten or more boards to repair before summer gets started, which will mean a trip to the lumber yard for more supplies.

Sunday I hadn’t planned on any more horse related experience. I got to work uprooting a small dogwood tree that had grown up all on its own about six inches from the corner of the house (my wife wanted it saved and moved out into the yard).  The whole dogwood experience was a lot more involved than I would have liked, because I was trying to save it, and I was only part of the way along when my daughter wandered up from feeding the horses to tell me the barrier between Trigger’s stall and that of our other gelding had been partly kicked down. There’s no telling why. Maybe they got persnickety about something in the other horse’s feed trough. Maybe they saw a snake outside. Maybe one of them was singing off key. Whatever happened, the end result was me spending a good hour or more repairing the horse stalls.

For all that I would rather have been relaxing today, it was amazing weather to be working outside, and I ended up counting myself lucky to be in the fresh warm air. We kicked the horses out of the barn so that we could have the fresh air blowing straight in, and it was just a wonderful afternoon.