Horses - graceful, beautiful, "drinkers of the wind", remarkable creatures of strength and intelligence, of wondrous stamina and agility - hunh? what? wait - do the people that write these things actually have horses? Have they ever been around one - you know up close and personal not just watching the Black Stallion movies? Maybe they all watched the animated "Spirit" and thought - yeah, now them horses are sure smart and beautiful!

Well, not to burst any bubbles but let me share a recent experience with these wonders of grace and intelligence. First, I know it was going to be an issue when I named him 'Trouble with a Capital T' but I thought just maybe - just this once - I would have a horse that does the exact opposite of living up to his name. Kind of like Spirit (named long before the movie) who could have been named Mule if she wanted to "live up to her name" or Luna which evokes images of a beautiful graceful white horse. Well, you would be right about the white thing but graceful? Let's just say I could have named her Calamity Jane and she would be right on course. So really I was not courting "trouble" or asking for disaster when I named him. I figured he would turn out rather slow and easy going. Delusional - yep that was me.

We have hit the winter months here in Idaho. Days are short and fairly cold. I feed the horses in the dark in the morning and once again in the dark in the evening. For the most part I just have to check to make sure the electric fence is still on and that all the horses are yelling at me to feed them cuz ya know even tho you could not find a rib to save your life through all that chunkiness they are starving. But, occasionally, I have found myself in the position of standing out there in the frostiness with my jaw hanging open wondering how, oh how, could he/she/they possibly have done this? With my past experiences you would think I could never be surprised at what they can get into but yet, there I was with my mouth open just the other night.

Now just picture this - Trouble hangs out with the "baby" herd. That is 3 moms (Dynasty, Cheneeka, and Tishka) and their babies (Baby Bug, Willow, and Trouble with a Capital T) . Now by baby I mean any where from 6 months old (T) to over a year (the two fillies and baby bug is bigger than her dam). They have a huge pasture to frolic in which ends right up about 75 ft from my house and next to where the hay is stacked. In one small area I have a 4 ft pole gate sideways. This means the poles are vertical instead of horizontal but only about 10 inches apart. you can see where this is heading right? I come out all bundled up and ready to feed to see Trouble partly through that gate. I see a head, neck, shoulders and two front legs on the wrong side of that gate. Now as I have seen many a weird horse thing in my day I am not too perturbed to begin with. I walk up to him and try to shoo him back - not too much. Cannot have him freaking out (something horses are really good at) but I do want him to try and pull back. Back and up is just so not going to cut it but that is what he tries. Imagine that - his head does not magically phase through the bars? He gives me this bewildered look. I just tell him I have chores to do so figure it out.

On my next pass by he has gotten himself even more in a pickle by somehow falling forward and back so that now his legs are sticking straight out in front of him and his hind end is sort of sitting down. The two girls are trying to be helpful by poking his butt with their noses. I know they were telling him that if he made it to the outside world to send help to free them all so they could become one with the hay pile. He meanwhile figures his only way out of this situation is to follow his head. So he keeps turning his head and neck to the side and then wondering why his big ol body does not just follow suit. His mother - being all motherly and all - is standing next to the real gate pacing up and down because she wants me to let her back into her stall for the evening with her dinner. Her son be damned. She'll worry about him after she eats everything first.

As I finish feeding and adjusting all the other horses into their nighttime patterns I cogitate on what I am going to do to get Trouble where I need him to be with minimal damage to me or the gate - see I have my priorities. But I have it figured out. I take my handy dandy rubber mallet - pop the gate on both sides with little fuss - stand there and pull the gate straight up and toward me. Back pops Trouble's head and his legs soon follow as he realizes that he can be FREE! I replace the gate and off he trots to his mommy. No thanks for me. That's ok I am used to it.

Two things I realized that night - my years with horses have been rather extraordinary. I have had to unwrap horses from fencing that 'gee I don't know how that got there, mommy'; had to take fencing down and out from under a horse that got stuck half over a fence; retrieve horses from stalls that they closed the door on themselves , the neighbor's pasture, the highway (a wondrous site to see a herd of horses cantering down the highway toward your car after dark and, yes, you can round up horses while yelling at them from your car), and the neighbor's garden; had to put horses away that opened their gates and then came looking in the large picture window while a half dozen spoos frantically and loudly bark 'mommy mommy the big ol smelly horses are out again' and find new ways to close that dang gate at 12:30 am, 2:30 am and on it goes. And that animals and kids are quite entertaining as long as you are willing to laugh at them (and yourself) instead of getting mad at their endless desire to figure out ways to make your jaw drop. Cuz you know - they are just going to keep on doing it.

So I have to wonder ... are all those people that write that flowery prose describing how wondrous horses are just delusional or is it just that me and mine are formed out of different molds?