Saturday, March 19th, 5:00 p.m.
Phone rings. “Hi
Scott. How are you?” “Juanita, I just wanted to call and let you know I moved
the horses from the north section to the south.” “OK, thanks.”
“I really called to tell you … that brown horse of yours ….”
Oh, oh. What has
Alloy done now? Apparently, after
getting caught, loaded, and moved, Al had decided he couldn’t get out of the
trailer fast enough, so he went charging out backwards, breaking the hay string
that had been used on his halter to lead him and load him. (We tend to use whatever is handy to move our
horses around, be it a dog leash, hay string, belt, whatever – as they are
generally very good about it.) There was
no way anyone was going to get near him again.
So we got the call that we now had a horse loose in a very large pasture
with a halter on; an absolute no-no in all our books.
We headed the 18 miles down off the mountain to see if we
could be of help.
Fortunately, the time
was just right for us to use our own canyon to make the trip.
Our canyon is under construction to fix flood
damages from 8 years ago and you can only drive it certain times of the
day.
We got to the pasture, found the
horses and discovered we also were not going to get near them; even my boy who
comes at a trot when I call said, “not now, there’s grass!”
Washoe is the white horse, Alloy is hidden behind him.
We decided to just come back the next day and ‘walk them
down’. Sunday dawned bright and sunny. This time Washoe walked right up to me and
let me brush all the mud off, a good deal of winter hair, and detangle the
dreadlocks from his mane; all without a halter.
We spent the morning walking the pasture behind a stubborn bay horse
with a more stubborn black mare, who seems to have become the lead mare
and wanted nothing to do with Alloy getting caught. Washoe went back to the other horses and started
grazing and the two errant horses decided to circle them. You would have thought they were inside a 30
ft. round pen, instead of on 30 acres of pasture.
Fortunately, the mare is not the endurance horse Alloy is,
and finally tired and joined the others grazing.
That made the circling game not so fun any
longer and Alloy finally joined them after a few more circles. Bill did almost
all the ‘lunging’ while I stayed on the outside incase one of them decided to leave
the circle.
Finally, Bill walked back to
the car for some water and more snacks.
In the interim Al decided to just hang with the others so I walked into
the group and started rubbing faces.
Guess who wanted his face rubbed, too?
After a couple of attempts, he stood still when I offered him an oat
granola bar in exchange for his halter.
He was very still while I unbuckled it, then almost forgot his oat bar.
He sooo wants to still be a wild horse!
The whole process really only took three and a half
hours. Bill said Alloy considered him
the ‘bad cop’ and me the ‘good cop’. What
a great way to spend a gorgeous day – with the horses.
Bionic Cowgirl
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