Sunshine

My mom sent me the post. She’s such a bad influence.

I told her no. I was not going to look at a horse. Yes, I may have accidentally ended up horse shopping, but a friend of mine had a pretty little gaited pinto mare for sale. She was close, and the price was good, and she sure looked pretty in the pictures. I was going to go look at her in a couple of days. There was no reason to ask about a horse on the other side of the state.

But my daughter kept asking why we couldn’t get a palomino. All she wanted in a horse, in life, was a palomino.

I don’t think that was all. But I’m not sure why I did it. My mom nagging, my daughter whining, a couple of pretty little palomino Morgans sitting there on my feed.

In the end I contacted the lady. Just to ask about them. It didn’t mean I was buying anything. There was still the pretty little pinto mare here to look at.

But, the more I looked the more I liked. One of the palominos was quieter than the other. He had every Morgan horse that I loved best in his bloodlines, Chingadaro, Californio, Illiniweck, Trubador of Willowmore, Juzan. The list would be endless. Good western lines, along with some showier lines.

His sire was gorgeous, his mom, related to my beloved Coyote also looked so much like him. I was contemplating. Then the lady offered delivery. What was I supposed to do?

Then she said she could deliver in a couple of days!

Maybe I would be able to keep this a secret until then. My daughter, begging for a palomino, I could surprise her with one of her own. What fun.

The couple of days dragged on forever. The day itself even longer. Then finally he was here. We unloaded this little piece of Sunshine from the trailer where he had spent a very long day, into the teeth of an incoming storm. Bits of rain blew at us, cold and biting. Dark clouds billowed over head.

He stepped off the trailer bright and curious. I let him turn around, much to his breeders horror. We haul loose in stock trailers. I don’t care if a horse backs out or not. He spooked and jumped around, much less than a baby who has spent his day cooped up in a trailer has every right to do. Hair whipping in the wind he walked with a fair amount of calmness to his new, temporary, pen. He spooked and jumped a little, circled as the other horses ran up. Then I got the halter off and he was free.

The horses ran the fence line a little but mostly settled to visit. Rusty my big, mean, grouchy boy, actually seemed to like him. They quietly sniffed noses and offered a little grooming over the fence. Things were much calmer than anticipated.

Then my friend brought the kids home from school. The much anticipated moment had arrived. What would she do?

My son noticed first. There’s a new horse! He said. Rain was still spitting down on us. We walked through the gates. The horses paced the fence line. My daughter petted the calves through the fence. My son ran about excitedly. Climbed on the hay bale to see if he could get this strange new horse to come up to him. Then jumped off the hay bale and climbed up a few more times. A bit startling for a young horse in a new place. No contact was made.

I called him over, down off the haybale and the horse came right up. Hands were sniffed. There were no treats. Not yet. Then everyone was cold and wanted to go inside. It was brief and slightly anticlimactic. If I wasn’t already so besotted with him I might have been disappointed.

Expecting an ugly duckling needing lots of time to grow into the beauty his breeding promised, I had been more than pleased when a beautiful young horse had stepped off the trailer. He is a bit gangly, but no where near as much as Rusty had been, slightly older than this when he came, and not even close to how ugly my beloved Coyote had been when young. Either he is going to grow into an even greater beauty than those two, or he’s going to be pretty now, then outgrow it.

By tonight Rusty has decided he might need to kill this young horse after all. Good fences are a good thing to have. Although I had hopped we wouldn’t need them. Hopefully Rusty calms down soon.