We had just moved to our place a month or so before, and with last of the cattle shipping from our summer herd contract, I hadn’t had much time to get the house unpacked. So, I was working on that on this particular day. Son Colin was a long three year old. He had a tricycle that he was putting miles on outside and I’d go out and check on him frequently to determine he hadn’t ridden plumb out of the country. It had really squeaky wheels and it was easy to locate him by that. My Dad had commented that some WD40 would sure improve the noise, but I’d assured him that I liked the noise. Kind of like a bell on the cat. The corrals were sketchy on the new place, and Colin had assisted me in taking out one particularly bad stretch that went across the west end of a big lot closest to the garage. Until a new fence could be constructed when time was less pressing, I had put in some steel posts and ran a tight wire across the gap. It was sufficient to keep a saddle horse in the lot, which was all I needed at the time. In that lot was my mare Lily. She was being doctored for a cut on a pastern, and that lot was a good place to keep her. It had some grass and weeds to pick at, plus a feeder full of good hay. I’d kept at the unboxing, organizing job before me, maybe for a little longer than I’d thought. Finally, I went to check on Colin. I could hear his squeaky tricycle as I went out of the back door. The noise from it and the sound of Colin singing was coming from the far side of the garage. I walked on out to get eyeballs on him and stopped when I did. Lily was standing next to the single wire fence, completely relaxed, while small son and squeaky tricycle made laps under her belly, around her hind legs, then under her belly and around her front legs, standing up enough on the pedals to bump his head on her belly each time. On the front legs pass, she would nuzzle his head. I watched this on repeat several times before shaking myself out of my frozen disbelief. Walking toward them, I suggested to Colin that he really should be riding on my side of the fence, not out in Lily’s pen, so he pedaled out to my side. Lily turned and hung her head as far toward him as she could, seemingly disappointed in losing her little playmate. Trying to explain to him that riding under Lily’s belly on a tricycle wasn’t a good idea was nearly pointless, as his age and trust in her was working against me. I instead had him help me string a second wire on the fence, thus fencing him out of the pen on the tricycle. It wouldn’t turn him, of course, but at least he wouldn’t be riding a squeaky tricycle under her belly over and over. That’s the price I paid for riding a tall horse, I guess.
Jan was raised on a ranch in far western South Dakota. She grew up horseback working all descriptions of cattle, plus sheep and horses. After leaving home she pursued a post-graduate study of cowboying and dayworking in Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota....
