"Smokey" part 1

When I read the email my mouth suddenly became dry and my pulses pounded. I yelled in a very loud voice that my husband has come to accept, if not relish, during our 20 year marriage “Pat, Amy says we can have Smokey!”

Having lived and worked in the city most of our lives, my husband’s dream was to move to the country and have lots of animals that we both loved. We had first acquired 2 donkeys from the Bureau of Land Management Rescue program and now we were going to be given a horse. I had been corresponding with Amy via email for several weeks. She had answered an advertisement I had placed on an Internet classified site. I said we wanted to adopt a “companion” horse, companion meaning we had no intention of riding but wanted a horse to keep our grass down and to whom we could love. Amy loved Smokey and wanted to be as certain as possible that we were the kind of people who would also love and care for him. She told us he had a crooked leg from birth and could be ridden only by a child or a very small person. We assured her we did not intend to ride him. She gave him to us with only one stipulation, that if we ever decided to give him up we would contact her.

We had picked up our donkeys from BLM and had kept them in a small pen for a couple of weeks while they had gotten used to us. They were about waist high and, while at the beginning very wild, with treats and gentle voices we had won them over – but now we were going to get a horse.

Smokey was coming from Iowa, and when the hauler arrived with the large trailer and Smokey was led out, my husband and I both let out a gasp! He was so big!! Amy has said he was very friendly but would he accept us and if not… The hauler handed my husband the halter rope and started around the side of his trailer. Both of us remained frozen! Smokey, meanwhile, gazed around, then eyed us passively as if to say “OK, now what?” I’m not sure what we did in the next 10 minutes except stand as statues. The hauler eyed us with amusement, probably understanding that he was in the presence of novice horse owners, he asked my husband “Do you want me to take the halter off him?” Pat later denied that his voice squeaked. The man took off Smokey’s halter and the big horse meandered out to look things over in his new home. I believe now he was probably amused at all the brightly colored ribbons we had tied on the barbed wire along our pasture line to make sure he knew his parameters. We had been told that horses might run and not see barbed wire fencing so the ribbons would be a good idea.

Smokey adjusted more quickly to us than we did to him. We have memories of our first days. Of Smokey coming up one morning and putting his head over Pat’s shoulder in an attempt to get to the sweet feed that was in the bucket Pat carried. Smokey didn’t push or bite, just stood there nuzzling at the bucket with the oats. When Pat got over his initial shock, he placed the bucket on the ground and hugged Smokey’s neck as he ate his breakfast.

Another time we learned how quietly a 1400 pound horse can walk. Pat was again in the feed lot and had gotten down on his knees to clean out the water trough. He felt a tickling at his back and turned to see this large horse towering over him. Smokey was peering down at him while gently nuzzling his back.

(Find "Smokey" part 2 here to read the rest of the story.)

©Carol Thomas
04/15/07

(Carol, Pat, and Smokey and the rest of their four-legged family live in Oklahoma. When Carol isn't outdoors enjoying her large animals, she's indoors enjoying her small ones while running her ebay business.)