Hody folks,

Well, we took our annual summer jaunt to Colorado to visit our friends Bob and Pam. (You remember them, the ones with the horses that have tried to kill me on several occasions. Wait. That doesn't sound right. It's the horses that have tried to kill me, not Pam and Bob--I think. Anyway, check through some of the past newsletters and you'll get my drift.)

This time our son Matt flew out to meet us about half way through our stay. Of course, Bob wanted to put him up on a horse, but Matt was very leery. Now our son makes like a 200 lb. cluster bomb and jumps out of airplanes for fun, and he was worried about riding a horse! Eventually, however, he rode with Bob up the mountain and loved it--except he couldn't get Shiloh, his horse, to obey him. Sometimes the horse, which is pretty young, would just stop in the middle of the trail to have a salad. Shirl had the same trouble with the brute, so Bob gave her his spurs. The problem is that her legs are so short that she was spurring the horse in the nose. That didn't work so well.

Anyway, the horse is as goofy as he is lazy. Bob takes Shiloh's stable buddy, Sancho, out and then Shiloh the slacker is a bloody ball of energy cause he's been left all alone. He runs around the wire enclosure screaming, rearing, bucking, slamming himself into the fence, and generally acting like that the bratty little kid in K-Mart whom you'd like to strangle. In any case, Bob took Sancho out for a ride last Sunday, and the enraged Shiloh did his number. Pam was in the house when suddenly the ruckus didn't sound just right to her. She looked out the window and there was Shiloh on his side thrashing around. Seems the equine snot managed to get his foot through the bottom two strands of wire, broke the bottom one, got that wrapped around his leg, then had a fit and tore out yards of that strand getting it further wrapped about his entire body. Vet bill should be about two thousand.

I don't know. Pam and Bob are batting about .500 with their horses. Bobby and Roulette, a brother and sister, were very good horses and lived long. Albert was blind in one eye and purely evil. Bob wouldn't believe that until the animal tried to fall down the mountain with him (or maybe he tried to organize a mutiny among the other horses, can't remember) and Bob got rid of him. (By the way, for those of you who are blind in one eye, please understand that I don't think that causes the condition of being purely evil, except maybe in horses.) Then, Bob bought his beautiful "paint" called Real. Real had only one quirk: sometimes he took a dislike to a butt on his back and got rid of it with an unexpected buck. Bob sold him. I would have shot him. And now, of course, he has Shiloh who, unlike Greta Garbo, does not "vant to be alone."

I told Pam that what they need to do is lose the horses, buy a couple of ATVs, name them Trigger and Champion, and build a little garage in the middle of the corral. Mechanics are cheaper then vets, gasoline is cheaper than horse feed (believe it or not), and if Trigger or Champion tick you off you can use a shotgun on them and not be inhumane--and they'd be less trouble to bury too.

Just remembered that the Fall 2002 newsletter describes some of the antics of Albert and Real.

Best,

Jim