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Foreword
Docs story actually begins with another horse all together. And some turkeys. Funny how things fall into place.
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One evening, nearing dark, my parents were working outside in their backyard. They were on the edge of the lawn, where it meets the woodline. My father was just off in the woods, clearing some debris near the narrow rocky trail that leads around a steep hillside. He had his back to the woods, and was talking with my mother, who was standing on the lawn. She was looking past my father into the woods when a movement caught her attention.
A bobbing motion, as she later described it, is what she had seen. As she looked harder, she could make out a horses head & neck but was uncertain if there was one or more horses. My father still had his back to the path & woods beyond. My mother sputtered something to him, and he turned to find himself nose to nose with a small black mare. The mare paid him no attention as she walked past him and stepped into the back yard where she began grazing.
Several months passed and the horse had become an anticipated visitor every evening at dark. She would arrive after the sun had gone down and graze until dawn the next morning. Before the sun was up over the mountains, she was gone.
Over the time that the mare visited, we had checked the "Lost and Found" section of the newspaper and my father had left word at the local coffee shops, but no one seemed to be missing a horse. One day, as we were headed into town, I suggested that we stop by a new tack shop that had recently opened and see if there was any information to be had on the nightly visitor. We had no luck there either, but did meet the owners of the shop, who would later prove to be much help to me.
I decided to test my non-existent horse grooming skills. I bought a few basic items from the tack shop and went to work on the mare the very next morning. She seemed to enjoy the attention and with her new found company, she stayed, for the first time, until early afternoon. The same afternoon, we made a quick run into town and wondered among ourselves if the mare would still be there when we got back. As we neared the house, we noticed a fresh pile of horse manure in the center of the main road. The mare was no where to be found when we pulled up into the driveway.
We would later find out that a man living on the highway had found the horse walking down the center of road, headed towards town. The same direction our truck had taken. He put the horse up and the owner was located several days later. My father was there when the horses owner came for her. The owner approached the mare, who in turn shied away from him. This prompted the owner to deliver a startling blow to mares face, and she stood stock still as he put her halter on and then led her away. Home, for the mare, was a very small dirt lot where she had lived alone, without shelter & without being ridden for 5 years. The lot was fenced on three sides, with the back side of the lot facing a steep drop off that the owners never thought she would try to navigate.
There was an unspoken disappointment that followed. There would be no more evening visitor. To make matters worse, my parents had fenced in their pasture and had planned to claim the horse, who we had come to think of as a 'stray'. As the weeks passed, the fenced pasture seem to call for something - and there was talk of finding another horse or a few calves to occupy the space.
During all of this, I had found an ad in a local traders paper for turkeys. I remembered that my parents had mentioned wanting to raise a few turkeys and I thought that a new addition to their farm might be welcomed. I contacted my friend Kim & asked her if she would like to accompany me the following morning to pick up some turkeys. She agreed and we made plans to meet early the next day.
After I arrived to meet her, I asked to use a phone so I could get directions to the people selling the turkeys. I called the number in the ad, all the turkeys had been sold. I was ready to go - and suddenly had no place to go anymore. I looked at Kim. "Well? Now what?" The conversation that followed drifted its way to 'horse hunting'.
And so the adventure began....
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