The words in that title rarely end up describing the best of situations.
But.... we shall get to that eventually.
After months and months of walking dry, crunchy-grassed earth,
sitting here listening to the sound of rain falling for much of the day
is quite welcomed.
I can only hope that it is sinking in and reaching our water table.
Yes, as the sun rose (but didn't show) yesterday, the edge of a cold front
settled in from the west.
A few well-placed breaks from the rain made animal chores easy.
One such break came late morning, when we needed to bring the horses
in from the front pasture.
Seeing us walking towards the gate, they all ran across the pasture
to greet us
(assuming that our pockets were filled with peppermints as is often the case...
but not so, this time.)
I easily hooked lead ropes onto Red and Ollie (the Littles)
and Hubbs went to get the ponies.
Scarlet stood at the ready, but Donnie had refused to come any
farther than halfway across the pasture.
"Why don't we just let him make his way home with Moonie,"
I suggested.
Moonie never lets us down and always takes himself back to the barn,
so it seemed to me that Donnie would follow his lead and head there as well.
Oh, how I would love if all of my horses would run back to the barn
at liberty!
Moonie exited the pasture as always... headed towards the barn.
I just new Donnie would follow his lead.
Apparently, Donnie was not in the mood to be cooperative.
He ran through the open gate, an instead of heading left towards the barn,
he made a sharp right turn and headed to the far end of the large indoor arena.
At that point, Moonie decided to follow suit;
and two horses disappeared around the end of the arena.
So, you see.... it seemed like a good idea... for only about a nano-second.
With great confidence, I said to Hubbs...
"Oh, don't worry... they will be right back.
They'll come to the barn, I just know they will."
I expected that perhaps they would take the long way around the arena
and end up meeting us at the barn where their yummy chow was waiting for them.
Well, I was wrong.
They made a pit-stop at the duck house,
gobbling up the little bit of scratch that we had thrown on the ground
earlier for the guinea fowl.
Hubbs was able to wrangle Donnie Brasco, who still had his muzzle on,
and usher him back to the dry lot,
while I safely stowed the Littles in the barn.
I went out the back door of the barn and chased Moonie out of the scratch...
at which point he resumed what would have been his normal
trot back to the barn.
All's well that ends well.
I texted our across-the-street neighbors who were out watching
this debacle - just to say...
that we were trying to provide them with a little entertainment
on this grey, rainy day.
I think we were successful.
However.... what seemed like a good idea at the time....
well...
it's one we probably won't repeat.
Although, we do like to keep the neighborhood entertained!
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