It’s a rainy Saturday.  I’m temporarily fairly immobile.  I have another knee replacement awaiting me in the near future.  So what to do?  I’ve got it!  I’ll blog some more.  That’s what I’ll do.  So here’s a fun little story from this last spring.

Becky is a mare from our breeding here.  She is 1/2 Belgian and 1/2 Paint.  She herself is a pretty black & white paint.  And she thinks so too.  (This is where I would insert a photo if I knew how to do that.  My glacial learning is progressing though).  Mason is a Thoroughbred off the track.  Tattoed upper lip, the whole thing.  He’s a tall boy, about 17.1 or .2 hands.  He was just too slow at running counter-clockwise.  He is not the build of a draft.  Not close at all.  Sometimes he stands directly behind a sapling tree in his pasture and we can miss him when we look out to count heads (which we do often here).  Now not getting too personal, he would be good at being a stud for our girls because he would be able to reach them…………got the idea?  Enough said on that one.

Draft/Thoroughbred crosses are alway popular in the English Equestrian, Hunter/Jumper events.  Lots of reasons for that breeding cross, but maybe I’ll get into that later on in another post.

So we have two studs on the property Mason and Brave (a tri-colored, spotted Drum Horse stallion from our breeding out of Christina one of our Clydes and by Galway Warrior—he’s on the internet—look him up, he’s worth it).  And I WILL get into Brave’s qualities for sure in a later post.

So Mason and Brave are understandably pastured a distance from each other (with a lot of amperage & joules in between them).  And the ladies are diagonally across the property from them both.

Well here’s the fun little story.  It was spring time (which explains a lot).  Mason has always had a hankering for Becky.  She’s been judgy though of his off-the-track, skinny bird-like physique.

Apparently a tree went over Mason’s fence line in the back, not easily seen.  But Mason had seen it and made his escape plans.  One early morning at dawn he carefully walked over the downed fencing, picked his way through the cypress knees and woods on the far side of our property (I’m sure so Brave wouldn’t see his competitor’s espionage plans).  Mason got up to the paved road, made a right, walked down the road in front of our house.  Continued on the road in front of our pasture.  Continued along the road in front of our neighbor’s front fencing to where their gate was open.  He let himself in, walked across their front yard, down our pasture line, through the line of cedar trees to the back pasture where Becky was watching him……………and that’s when we got the early morning call from our neighbors (who are sometimes less than tolerant, just my opinion here).

You always hate those early morning calls don’t you?  They are hardly ever good.

So my husband answered the phone.  Why is it you always try so hard to act like you weren’t sleeping when you obviously were?  He was very diplomatic.  I’m so glad the telephone was on his side of the bed.  Like I said, I think they could be a bit more tolerant and a bit less suburban……….what do they expect?  We lived here first.

Our neighbors had no idea it was an unrestrained stallion who was standing in their yard.  They said it was one of our black mares. The yo-yo’s had no idea what “could” have happened.  It all became a non-issue though, because Becky played apathetic & hard-to-get.  My daughter and husband got there turbo quick with halter and lead rope and walked Mason home.  Trust me it really could have ended up sooooo differently.

Poor Mason, he had the walk of shame back home that time.  Plus it proved to me that my neighbors should go back to their side-walked suburbia if they can’t tell the difference between a black Percheron mare and a mahogany bay Thoroughbred stallion……………………………Really!!!

We chain-sawed the tree and fixed the fence.

I do wonder how many of our other neighbors must have driven past Mason on his solitary sojourn down our road and figured it was just another day at the oasis at our house.  No one else has ever commented on it.

Becky you are so cold.