Felt Like a Benedict Arnold

Some times we would spend a week or two at one or the other of my Aunt’s farm homes during the summer. It was those times, I would be up at the crack of dawn and let the adventures begin.There were cows and chickens and geese, oh my, with 40 acres of land to explore. I loved to wander out into theopen pasture and just walk; taking in the sun and the sky and the smells of fresh, cow manure. I loved to watch the animals, always taking caution not to go to close to the cows as one can never predict how they might react.

One year my father had allowed me to purchase a Shetland Pony. My father was never to keen on the idea of me being anywhere near a horse, on account of he had had a brother that had been drug by one, as he had fallen from the saddle, my father had told me, and his foot got caught in the stirrup. However, this little Shetland was different and passed my father’s approval, because he was a foundered pony, and being that made him a safe, pet. However, my father told me he would never buy me a saddle; I would have to learn to ride my pony bare back, as a free fall was a better fall, in my father’s eyes. We moved the pony, his name was Peanuts, to my Aunt’s farm and then of course, more so than ever before, I was up at the crack of dawn, to see to my pony.

One morning I went out to the pasture to get Peanut and I found him laying in the pasture, still taking it easy on that morning. I walked ever so carefully and slowly to him, so as not to disturb him as I wanted him to stay laying there. I sat next to him and then worked myself up under his head, so his head could rest upon my lap. It was nice, his head resting in my lap, I stroked his neck and we sat quietly enjoying each other’s company and the quiet of the brisk summer morn.

The next year after, Millie, which was the other Shetland Pony that was with Peanut when I bought him, came to be at my Aunt’s farm, too. Both ponies had belonged to my sister and her first husband. Now as the years have gone by, I am unclear as to all the details as to how that all came to be, but there they were together, Peanut and Millie again.

Now Millie, unlike Peanut was not a foundered pony. But unlike Peanut, she did not trust people. I remembered the day we went to buy Peanut, they caught Millie too, using a motorcycle. It was the only way they knew to catch her. Now, she has become a part of my summers.

My Aunt’s brother had bought a mini bike for his grand children to ride and for me too, if I was of a mind to do. And one morning, I took it for a spin in the pasture. I spotted Millie and after seeing how those men had done, I thought why not and I gave her a run. In doing so, I hit a bump in the pasture and flew head over the handle bars, landing on my back. Stunned for a moment; I went to sit myself up and there was Millie, looking at me and then she gave a whinny and a nod of her head. She was laughing at me, or so it seemed at the time, and in doing that she sparked an even greater interest in me, the lover of observing all things animal behavior related. That moment was the beginning for me.

I took the mini bike back to the house and replaced it, with a pale of feed and off I went to catch a pony. She saw me with the pale and began to walk towards me, but she wouldn’t go near the feed, until I sat it down and stepped back far enough away that she trust, I could not touch her.

Each morning after when I went to feed Peanut, I would take another pale of feed for Millie, too. And each morning ended the same as the first, with me standing back away from the pale, while she ate. I talked to her though each time and each time I tried to reach out and pet her, she would jump and bolt away.

One morning I gathered the pales of feed and off I went out into the pastures, I was so fixated on the ponies, I forgot to take notice of the cows, who had noticed me, carrying two pales of feed and that had begun to follow me. I found Millie and Peanut among the trees next to the neighboring fence. I sat the pales down and backed away, as always, and it was then I noticed several of the cows that had followed me and they were standing relatively close to us. As the ponies ate, I assessed the situation and I thought there was no way I could make it out of the pasture and back to the house without an issue from the cows.

Then I thought, well, ‘I’ll reach out to pet Millie, she’ll jump and bolt like she always does; chain reaction, she’ll scare the cows away’. So I reached out to pet Millie and the darnedest thing happened, she didn’t jump; she just stood there. I continued petting on her, stroking her neck and her back even, and I told her she had picked a fine time to let me do that.

After a time and obviously the cows were not going away. I picked up the empty feed pales and climbed through the barbed fence onto the neighbor’s pasture. They had a horse, no cows and I walked up the fence line onto the road, hung a left, walked back down the long driveway, before arriving back at the house. It was a long walk that gave me time to think.

I put the two pales away and gathered up the horse bridle that was Peanut’s from the barn and off I went back out the pasture, this time the cows didn’t pay to me any mind. I approached Missy with bridle in hand, thinking for sure she would bolt this time, but she didn’t. I put the bridle in the flat palm of my hand and up under her nuzzle I went with it and she gobbled it up, without a fuss in the world. I was amazed at how easy that was to do.

I led her up to the house and took her through the fence gate and tied her to a tree. I went and got the grooming brush and began to give her a grooming cover every inch of her body. I even brushed her tale. Seeing she let me do that, without a side kick, it made me wonder what else would she let me do that day.

My Aunt’s pasture was partitioned into 3 pastures separated by fencing. I led Millie back through the fence gate and took her to the pasture in the middle. It seemed large enough to me, that if she bucked and bolted and I flew off, I would not land near or on a fence line.

At first I laid across her back while on my belly, just to see her reaction to that. While I lay there I stroked her neck and her belly. Then I eased my leg up and over and sat up on her back straight up with bridle in hand. I sat there, waiting, with the knowing it was about to happen, the buck of lifetime. She didn’t though. She just stood there as I sat there, stroking her neck and talking to her. Then I gave her a nudge with my thighs, hey girl, let’s go. She gave a protest of a small buck, but then she was off to a walk. That was the start of a new friendship as I had her trust and she was working on gaining mine.

Summers got a lot more fun. Every morning I would go out to the pastures, with a bridle in one hand and a halter in the other and gather up the two ponies and bring them back to the house to feed. No more worries about the cows. I loved on ’em both, I groomed on ’em both and I exercised them both. Neither pony would go over a walking gate. Peanut, because it pained him to do so with his hooves being a problem. Millie though, every time I tried to nudge her to a gate faster than a walk, she would do her little buck of a protest and me not wanting to land on the ground would let the issue be.

There was a man I found not to far from my Aunt’s home; he lived next to the highway, that would trim Peanut’s foundered hooves for 5 dollars. It was a task that had to be done often, as his hooves grew out like a person’s fingernails.  The man had two daughters and they had a Quarter horse. On one occasion that I rode Peanut over for his trim, they asked if I’d like to ride their horse. Oh, be still my heart. He was saddled (my father would have had heart failure) and ready to go, just take him out onto our pasture they said.

I mounted their not so little pony and off we went at a gallop across their pasture and oops, since I had never learned how to use a saddle, my legs gave out on their grip and off I landed onto the ground on my back starring up at the sky. The horse, he was just standing there, looking at me, looking back at him. If at first you do not succeed, one tries that again. So, I put my foot into the stirrup and into the saddle I was once again. I spurred him with my heels into a gallop and once again I found myself on the ground looking up at the sky, but this time the horse was standing over me, looking down at me, like what are you doing down there, again?

After having been defeated twice, I knew better than to try a third time, so I gather the pony’s reigns and we walked together back up to the house. The girls were all a giggle, me too, as it was funny and they said, that their father had been up on the roof of the barn doing repairs and watching me and he said, ‘she fell off again girls’.

As I road my little Peanut back to my Aunt’s house, it gave me time to think. Millie, she did not increase her gate, because she didn’t want to trot and gallop. She didn’t do it, because some how she knew it would not be safe for me and that I would fall off. Feeling that, made me appreciate her all the more.

My childhood and teenage years spent on the farms of Aunt’s, Uncle’s and Cousins, were always full of adventures for me. It was the animals though, that made that time complete. From the curious cows, to the bull, that trapped me in the barn, to the goose that decided it didn’t want any part of me and pecked a goose egg onto my knee, none of that mattered to me, as to me, it was all a part of being.

In the last year of my teenage life, the adults were conspiring and little did I know until I was told, something really bad was about to happen.

My father came to me and said that my Aunt could no longer keep the ponies on her property and they all felt it best if they were sold. He said, my Aunt had found a buyer and that I didn’t need to do anything, but know they were to be sold and that was the end of that.

It was a Saturday I think that the phone rang with my Aunt on the other end and she talked to my mother and my mother told my father what she said and then my father came to me. He said, that the man had come to pick up the ponies and Peanut was no trouble and he was able to load him onto the trailer, but they needed help with Millie. He said, the man could not catch her and she wouldn’t come up to him and they needed my help.

It was a long drive out that day to the country it seemed; my father he didn’t say much, surely picking up that I was lost in my thoughts. When we arrived at my Aunt’s house, I went to the barn and got the halter and a handful of feed. They told me she was in a thicket of trees on the north side of the pasture. I walked out to find her in her hiding spot and I went up to her and let her have the feed from my hand. I stroked her head and then her neck and tears began to fall. I put her halter on and led her from the trees and up on her back I went for one last ride together, through the pasture up to the man’s trailer, parked just inside the fence. I slide off her back and I loaded her onto the trailer and there I bid her farewell. The man handed me a check and said, thank you.

I went straight to my father’s car, opened up the passenger side door and sat down in the seat. He joined me a bit later and we began our journey home. Millie trusted me, I kept thinking and at that I had nothing but tears I felt I had betrayed our trust. I lost a bit of faith in people too from that experience, in that they would make decisions like that with no other seemingly alternative, but what they say is what will be and nothing how it may effect a person, it doesn’t matter.

My father though said something to me that day, a thing I will never forget and that which I would recall again in but a few years later. He said, ‘you are the strongest little person I think I’ve ever known’.

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