Bill's Bored!

Our horses are turned out to pasture,

which fills them with nothing but rapture.

With a whole mountain side

on which they can hide.

Ummm...eh....well damn, this poems a bust.

Bill

Doggerel is not for horses, Beel.

Can you tell?  It's cold outside; it's been cold outside for a while now! Negative 6 at 7:00 a.m. (don't know the night's low; don't want to know).  It is now positive 8* out there.  The small family group that are staying with us this weekend opted to brave the cold and go for a hike in the park.  Well, darn!  That makes us feel like wimps, so we decide the horses would like some hay.  Now we are not even trying to fool ourselves into thinking we are doing this for the horses.  This is solely for our personal peace of mind - it's such a boost just getting to see them out there loose - and it gets us outdoors, if for only a short time.

We load up the truck with a couple of bales and drive the 15 minutes to their pasture.  Nobody home.  We decide to unload the hay and do a couple of drive-bys to peak into their open spaces.  Jokingly, I tell Bill we should start beeping the horn a couple of times at home when we drive up in the truck, so they get used to the sound.  He laughs and  ....  beeps the horn right then.  We climb out, unload the hay, and head down the embankment with our load.  Half way to the gate I see a white head peak out of the trees beyond the first meadow.

Washoe:  "It is you!  Hey, guys, the hay people are here."  He starts to amble up, then breaks into a trot when he sees what we have just thrown onto the ground.

As we climb through the gate into the field to move the bales away from the fence, Jesse breaks out of the trees at a dead run, bucking her way up the hill.  She gently nudges the bale in my hand and looks at me, like she's saying thank you.  Once we set the bales down, they both dive into one of them; I swear they were purring.

Looking around, we both wonder where the old man is.  Bill starts heading down the hill toward one of their favorite paths through the trees, where the grays had appeared.  As he's walking, I turn to Jesse and ask her, "So, where IS the old man?  Where's Ranger?"  She looks off over my shoulder at a different spot.  I look that way and there he comes, ripping out of the trees like some young colt from a new place.  I call to Bill just as Ranger spots him in his peripheral vision, does a huge leap to the side, hesitates with one of those beautiful stallion poses you see in pictures, then says, "OH, it's only Bill," and proceeds towards us at his funny trot.  All accounted for - and obviously feeling good.  Gee, they look good; all sleek and shiny.  Even Ranger's two-toned mane sparkles now.  We do a complete rub-over of all of them.  They are toned, good weight and feet in great shape.  They have slimmed down; you can see Washoe's ribs a bit, but you usually can, even when he is considered 'fat'.  He's just built that way.  We laid our faces on their backs and you could feel all that heat emanating off them.  They do like their freedom.  We drove home feeling like new people.

Bionic Cowgirl