I was so proud of my self and my husband,Lee, on Saturday. We rescued two wild horses by rounding them up. Well - Sort Of. At about noon I got a call from our neighbor who said her stepson had called her saying two of their horses had escaped the confines of their way to small pen and were running loose though the Tumbleweed Crossing neighborhood. Could We Help? Now the stepson is a big, strapping, young man about 25 or so, but he seems to be a bit intimidated by the equines he was chasing. Of course said equines are 2 year old colts that haven't had the most adequate training. And since they found their selves with way to much freedom, that minimal training had been left behind in their pen.
Of course we agreed to help. What kind of neighbors would we have been if we had said no? And besides - next time it might be my knot-headed ponies that were terrorizing the countryside.
After several minutes of not seeing either the young man or the wayward horses, Lee and I each grabbed a halter, jumped into different trucks and headed out to see what we could find, each of us going different directions.
I found a horse first. I hadn't gone more that a few hundred yards when a black horse, with three white stocking ran down the road near me. It then continued back in the direction of both our place and the neighbors where he had run away from. Good! I drove slowly until I could park near my place, got out, and tried to get near the terrified animal. NO WAY! An idiot in a pickup truck raced by him as if he didn't even see the black horse standing in the road. Could the driver have been that blind? If so why was he driving? And especially at that speed; way over the limit?
But then the wild horse spotted my horses and went right to the fence to see them. The gate to my driveway was open. By moving behind the horse I slowly working him down the road until he was right by the gate, and, thankfully went right in so that he could visit with all those nice horses that he could see. He was still really spooked and wasn't going to let me near him. No problem. I really didn't want to have to halter a frightened horse. So I opened the gate to our small field and let him find his way into it.
One horse caught. Where was the other one and Lee?
Lee pulled back into our place, as did the Sheriff, who was trying to help find the horses, too. Seeing that I had one, they went on over to another neighbors, about a quarter of a mile away, where the Sheriff said the other one had been spotted. I waited around for a few minutes to make sure the black horse was going to be all right. It wasn't long before I saw Lee coming back leading the other wild horse, a roan, while the neighbors stepson followed. We put the roan in with his black friend to await the return of the owners.
Later Lee told me that the roan had jumped a short fence then was cornered by the stepson and a couple of other people that lived in the area, but they were all afraid to try to put a halter on him and lead him out. Lee said that by that time the horse was so tired that he was able to walk right up and slip the halter on. The horse didn't want to lead back but was to exhausted to put up to much of a fight.
Hopefully the two run-away, teenage horses have had their only and last fling at trying to become true wild horses.
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