And So He Grows

Tomorrow, Danny will be five months old! It still amazes me how quickly he is growing. Also tomorrow will be his third visit with Dale Collis, our farrier. It will just be Dale and me this time since Steve is working so I hope I can handle him on my own. He still hasn't quite adjusted to the fact that Dale is not trying to cut his feet off. It terrified him the first time he saw Dale trimming his mom, Mouse, and Mousie loves her "pedicures."

I'm going to tell you a story which may not be as funny in the retelling but it sure was funny when it happened. Miss Brandy has a hoof abscess and while it is healing I'm keeping her separated from the others so that I can give her medication in sweet feed and not worry about some other (always) hungry horse grabbing it. Tuesday evening, it was raining, finally at the first of Autumn since we've been very dry this Summer, and so I didn't have my camera with me which always seems to be when I really need it. I let the four horses out into the upper pasture and hopped back into the truck to drive down to the lower pasture to take care of Brandy. As I was getting out of the truck, I heard an odd, high shriek. I turned around to see Danny running down into the middle pasture and around the copse of trees where the old cabin use to sit. He was screaming as he ran. I looked back to the top of the hill where the two geldings were leaping about joyfully like two mean little boys who'd just gotten away with something. Mouse was on the very top of the hill and she came running when she heard Danny screaming. She didn't go to the foal; instead she stopped at the fence which separates the pasture from the road and she craned her neck as she peered at Danny's wild run. Then she gets this really cold but angry expression on her face as she slowly turns her head and looks back at the geldings. As soon as she looked at them, the two boys stopped leaping about and stood stock still watching Mouse. I'm sure they knew that they were about to pay for whatever they'd done to her baby. Both of them suddenly turned and started running away just as Mouse pinned her ears back and started chasing them. She was at least a hundred feet from them but quickly caught up to them and was biting Riley's behind as they all ran. When he sees the other horses galloping around the field, Danny forgets all about whatever injustice had been done to him and decided to join them. He lived up to his name of Flyby as he quickly caught up with the other three horses and then easily, fleet as a deer, he outran all of them with his head and tail held high. In defense of the geldings, I'm sure that he most likely deserved whatever they'd done to start all of this. He is a bit of a brat but he's my bit of a brat ;-)