Ah, they must be behind our neighbors house…
Oh yea, I guess.
*An hour passes*
Where the heck are my horses? I’m going to go find them.
*5 minutes later*
Ashton! My horses are gone!
WHAT!?!?!
That, my friends is a very entertaining start to what is sure to be an unproductive day. Anna grabs some halters and lead ropes, and we jump into the car on the quest of trying to find our four disappearing horses.
As noted in a previous post, all it takes is a couple of cows for Liana to break a fence… but this time she was on a good 10 acres of land, so we figured she would have enough space to run and hide (from the evil cow goblins).
Apparently not.
The Quest Begins:
LEVEL 1: Finding our steeds. We started our quest by driving off down the road for about a mile. With luck on our side, we found them without any problem:
LEVEL 2: Putting on two halters. (If we could lead two of the horses, the other two would follow, being herd animals.) The horses didn’t run off as we approached, and Anna got a halter on Liana and gave her to me.
During this time, a friendly neighbor by the name of Patty brings over a Folgers can full of “bribery” (grain). The other three horses were more difficult to acquire, but with the expert application of the afore mentioned “bribery,” Anna finally got a halter on Ossette.
With two of our four horses haltered, and our car sitting on the side of the road, we began on the journey back to the ranch.
LEVEL 3: Cows. Yes, that’s right. Cows… On this dirt road back to our house, we have a field of cows on the right-hand side. Thankfully most of them were napping a good distance from the fence, so it only freaked out the girls a little bit. (Jett, the stallion could care less.) With lots of love, coaxing, and hard pulling on the lead ropes, we managed passed Level 3 without too much of a problem.
LEVEL 4: More Cows! Yes… it gets worse. After another 100 yards or so we come upon an entire herd of awake cows on the right side of the road. The more afraid of the cows our horses got, the more interested the cows got. There must have been 100 cows pressed up against the fence. (I apologize for the lack of pictures as it took two hands minimum to keep Liana on target.)
We worked at getting past this level for a good 5 minutes. At one point, I lost the level (and the lead rope), and had to start all over again. =)
But in the end we did get through this difficult level.
And just as we did, I had a great photo opportunity with Liana and Onora:
(I think this is my favorite horse picture of all time.)
Little did I know, but these very attentive horses were looking at…
FINAL BOSS – LEVEL 5: Horse Stampede. On the left side of the road, is just over 40 acres of land and 30 mares, who are normally all eating grass. As I look over at them after taking the above pictures, I see at least 20 of them galloping straight at us….
I was praying that the girls wouldn’t spook as the herd drew closer, and my prayers were answered. The herd (thankfully) stopped at the wire fence, and the girls stayed calm. Jett even went over to say, “Hi!” As he sniffed noses with five other horses, one of the mares got her foot caught in the wire fencing, she panicked and ripped it away from the posts.
This freaked everyone out, and the stampede ran off into the distance.
After defeating the Horse Stampede, we had a short walk back to the ranch and completed the quest.
It turns out that the cows were making a ruckus this morning, and must of scared Liana into the fence… She broke down three fence posts and got a small cut on her chest:
The weird part is how she managed to get to the other side of the cows… She would have had to run past all those cows to get to where they were. That will be one mystery that probably will never be solved.
-Enjoy
-Ashton
(P.S. On a positive note, we met another very nice neighbor, Patty, and she gave us a ton of rubar leaves!
)