The Day of My Farmer and Horse.

 What a beautiful weekend!

I hope you had one as nice.

 We went to my in-laws' house and visited with an aunt who lives in another state;

she comes down to visit once a year.

The kids love Granddad and Grandmom's.  My Farmer's sister and her bunch all live upstairs and the Grands live in the basement apartment.  It's a beautiful place and they have chickens, goats, Icelandic sheep, alpacas, cats, bunnies, horses, guineas, a ferret, a chinchilla, a giraffe and an elephant.

Okay, all but the giraffe and elephant.

But maybe one of these days.

Oh, and this:

 (Sigh)

It's our mini-horse Misty.

I love her and miss her.

Violet and I pooled our hard-earned allowance together and bought her this past spring after we'd looked at numerous minis.  She pulls a cart, which is what I wanted her for.

 Isn't this great?  I love having a horse that pulls a wagon.  And she's super strong!

There's just one thing that is missing from this picture.

Something you cannot see very well.

It's the panic in my face,

the sweat on my palms,

the shaking of my legs.

You see, Misty is fast.

She thinks she's a racehorse.

When we bought her from the Amish man, she wanted to go, but I just thought...

Well, I don't know what I thought.  I guess I thought she just had energy,

which is a great thing for hauling my plants up to my roadside stand,

but I want my plants to arrive still in the pots.

The first time I hitched her up to the cart,

(which in itself was an ordeal because there are 250 straps that go into pulling a cart and I'd only had a short lesson in how to attach them all)

I got into the cart, and

remembering all the Western movies I'd loved growing up,

swatted the reins on her little black bottom,

and almost instantly did a back flip into the back seat when she SPRINTED into top speed.

The only thing I remember seeing, as I tried to collect myself back onto the seat,

was my Farmer's eyes:

Fear.

The kind that makes the eyeballs grow in size.

"STOP THE HORSE!"

Was all I heard him say,

but no matter how I pulled back, she wasn't stopping

and we were flying!

We were headed up the driveway toward the street

and I could just hear my husband repeating the command he gave,

as if I hadn't heard it the first time.

The only solution I saw coming was to let her run it out until we stopped somewhere miles away and hoped I'd know where I was.

But I suddenly saw another option as we came quickly toward the barn,

and that was to head her toward the closed door of the barn.

I did that

and all was well,

at least until my Farmer and I caught our breaths,

and we turned her about for round 2:

10 laps around the pond, til she finally calmed some and agreed to give in to my command to walk.

I knew this tiny horse was not going to work for my inexperienced daughter.

But I grew up at a camp with horses and worked with a few of them and helped tame them,

so I knew I could work with Misty and in a few years, I'd have her doing what I wanted.

I just didn't know what to do about Violet.  After all, this was her horse, too, and she wanted to ride.

And I wanted her to stay alive.

Besides that, as much as I wanted to spend time and train Misty, I had a big obstacle:

This baby is a little time consuming,

and she was even more so when we first got Misty.

Her nap-time was hard to spend on training a horse when it was springtime

and I had a million other things that HAD to get done.

Oh, yes, and the guy here on the slide.

  In this picture you miss the 5 seconds preceding this where we were coming down the driveway at a fearsome speed,

and I could see my little man perched

here.

I didn't want to see him in the pathway of my racing beast.

So my sister-in-law allowed her two teenage girls to swap Misty for

good old Jake.

He's the sweetest old donkey and perfect learning experience for my young crew.

Still, I miss Misty and look forward to the day when she's a mite bit calmer.

My nieces are doing an excellent job with her and I know she's much better off with them for a few years.

Be good to my nieces, Misty.

You give me a good laugh about it now,

but you certainly didn't help my Farmer's stress level that day.

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