Certifiably crazy, that’s me. It’s the dead of winter, a foot of snow on the ground, I’ve got tank heaters running up an electric bill, just two round bales left before we have to buy more, and five horses out there eating. And I want to buy another horse.
Don’t tell my family. They already think I’m crazy for even wanting to keep one horse, but I can justify this urge to add one more. For one thing, a couple of our horses are here only for training, and won’t stay with us past the first couple of months of spring. We have been looking for just the right horse for at least three years now, and it seems we may have found one dirt cheap.
My husband ran into a guy at the sale barn last Saturday (we were there buying calves, not horses!) and this is the guy who sold us Daisy six years ago. He owns a bunch of Quarter Horses and has a few mares bred every year, and like the rest of us, his herd is always growing. During the winter, he puts about ten of his horses out in a cornfield by the highway. We always see them when we drive past, and he’s got this big beautiful buckskin out there in a herd of sorrels. So my husband asks him about her at the sale barn, and he says he’d sell her for $300.
I was elated. I’d been emailing another guy about a yearling stud colt priced at $700, and just wasn’t certain about buying him. He had bloodlines that I liked, but is at that adolescent age where his rear end is higher than the front and his forehead bulges out between his eyes a little bit. Being all hairy with a winter coat doesn’t help, either. I just wasn’t sure if he was what we wanted.
So anyway, we’re going to look at this mare as soon as this snowstorm lets up. And I’m chomping at the bit to bring her home and start some groundwork on her. She’s four years old and never been handled much, hence his reason for pricing her so low. And my husband made me promise I’d stick to groundwork until spring gets here….ha! He knows me too well.
While washing up supper dishes tonight, I was daydreaming about this new horse, and my thoughts started rhyming so I got a pen and wrote them down in a silly little poem. I’ll share it here:
The horse lover’s creed
Is a doctrine of greed
Disguised in a language of love.
For these creatures we ride
Are too oft multiplied—
You can never have more than enough.
We start out with just one,
‘Cause a horse would be fun,
But in no time our best-planned intention
Has gone up in smoke,
With our bank account broke
And a serious need for intervention.
We soon buy another,
A sister, a brother,
Needed for our one horse to befriend,
For if he were our only
He would be too lonely…
And with two, twice the money we spend.
We buy hay, we buy saddles,
We buy brushes and paddles,
And any new trinket we find.
If the horse trainer has one,
Then that’s the way it’s done,
So the horse world won’t leave us behind.
Then we’ll take in a rescue,
Since we’ve got extra fescue,
And it would be unkind not to share.
And since he’s so boney,
We next buy a pony
So our kids can show it at the fair.
We can’t stop at four—
What’s eight or nine more,
When you’re buying three truckloads of hay?
It’s worth every dime
When it comes feeding time,
And the horses run to you and neigh.
And that’s how our need
Disguises our greed—
I know, for I speak from experience.
See, I’ve got my eye
On a buckskin nearby,
Which I’ll buy if there’s no interference.
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My name is Phyllis Waltman and I have just published a photographic story of a wild mustang family in northern Wyoming on BLM land entitled ‘Sunny Boy and Little Sunny’. The book is about the first day in the life of a wild mustang baby. This is a wonderful story inspired by my first hand experience with a wild mustang herd. To see excerpts from the book check out my website at http://www.artforthehorselover.com. Thanks! Phyllis Waltman