I love dogs and cats, I get on quite well with them in fact.
They were familiar additions to my life growing up both in my parents’ house and my grandmother’s.
As a mother I went one step further than the traditional cat and dog, I raised raccoons, possums and squirrels when the children were younger than me.
One summer I managed to single handedly dispose of my blue-eyed, looks just like hubs, son’s snakes by airing them outside one afternoon under the brutal Texas sun. I did live it down!
However, the animal I really want to get to know well enough not to be startled when it raises its head in greeting, is the horse.
When I was young, about 4, my parents took me and my younger brother to Italy, it was a camping trip, we repeated the experience once more when I was 18. I have never slept in a tent since.
This is not a camping story, it is about horses.
I was with my parents in Rimini, Italy, we were buying our fresh vegetables and fruit for the day and I must have stopped to look at the row of horse drawn carriages along the pavement. Perhaps I was a little too close, but I was young and under the protection of my parents so stood fearlessly, feeling their warm breath on my face. Before I knew it I’d been bowled over by the one closest to me who had been slowly nodding, making his harness bells rattle. His head came down right in front of me, I reached out to rub its soft muzzle and the next I knew I was on the ground.
Of course the driver must have jumped down from his perch and rushed over to my side gesticulating and speaking in excited Italian and hoping my parents would not be angry and order the retirement of his livelihood.
But, I doubt that little scenario occurred, it was my parents and we are British to the core! I imagine they picked me up, brushed me off and we went on our way, embarrassed by the commotion I’d just caused.
I suffered a scrape the length of my torso where my skin had been caught by the hardware around the horse’s head and a small graze under my chin. I remember being delighted by these marks of my close encounter with this gentle giant.
Surprisingly I am not afraid of horses, perhaps because my parents played it so cool…
I have never grown accustomed to them though because I have never had the opportunity to.
Look as this beautiful horse just crying out to be stroked,
and this one who crossed my path in New Mexico one Fall,
How lovely is he? His nose just begs to be stroked!
Daughts has invited me to ride horses with her at Marge’s place in Blooming Grove but I think I need more exposure than a short few hours walking around her fields, I look good next to a horse though don’t I?
Number one on 2014’s bucket list.
Get to know horses!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
No comments so far!
Leave a Comment