Horses, Hounds and Other Country Critters: Humorous Tales of Rural Life

Prologue

IT WAS GOING TO BE ANOTHER one of those hectic days down here on the farm. It had started with fish in my horses’ water tank, a baby magpie in my bedroom, a half-dozen wee ankle-biters rolling in the dirt trying to get the smell of skunk off their fur, and now this calamity.

The month-old foal must have lain down next to the fence. When he stood up, he found himself on the wrong side. He was just beginning to get excited about being separated from his momma. This was not good. The gate to get him back on the right side was at the far end of the fenceline. I certainly didn’t want him to panic and crash through the wire and injure himself. Since trying to herd a young foal that has not been handled seldom works, I had to catch the unconcerned mare and lead her to the gate to get them reunited.

Of course, the mare had to be the only one I owned that was harder to catch than a good-looking man. The second she saw me with halter in hand, she was off like a witch on a broomstick—and not toward her nervous baby either. He called frantically for his momma, and she just put on more speed heading for the far side of the pasture.

Not to worry, one of my old retired mares was a trusted babysitter for the colt. I haltered her quickly and led her along the fenceline toward the gate, the colt staying fairly calm as he kept pace with us on the other side of the wire fence. Reaching the gate, I eased it wide open for him to come through. His mother had finally figured out that she should come looking for her colt and was coming full throttle.

The colt took a good look at the open gate, dropped to his knees and slipped safely back into the pasture under the bottom wire next to it. That was about the time his momma charged through the gateway before I could even begin to swing it closed. Without slowing down in the slightest, she was soon halfway across the neighbour’s field heading for parts unknown.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the side of the old mare that was nuzzling the colt like the good babysitter that she was. I wondered, Is it just me or are all my animals abnormal too?

CHAPTER

1

Muk and Luk

GIVE ME STRENGTH TO FORGIVE my grandson Travis for his deeds, for I was innocent until he did an unforgivable thing to me. Everyone knows of my great love for animals. Everyone knows that every two-legged bird, every four-legged animal is dear to my heart. But fish?

In the dead of winter, I wandered out to check my horses’ water tank to make sure it was full enough and not frozen over. Lo and behold, there was a cardboard sign duct-taped to it. Upon close inspection of the scribbled writing, I made out the words Home of Muk and Luk. Wondering who and what in tarnation were a Muk and Luk, I peered into the depths of the water searching for clues. Nothing. Just a stock tank of water and a bottom heater to keep it from freezing solid. But wait—was that a flash of movement under that hot heating coil? Oh, my heavens—a tiny orange goldfish! And look, a tiny black goldfish!

Fish are good. They’re good fried, poached and smoked. But I know nothing about live fish. Live fish are good in a beautiful, well-maintained aquarium in someone else’s house, not my horse tank.

How those little beggars survived is beyond me. They dared not move out from under that heating coil otherwise hypothermia would have immediately made them slower than molasses in January. And, of course, it was now out of the question to let the horses’ tank get almost empty once a month, then take an old straw broom to scrub the algae off the sides and tip out the sludge in order to clean it.

No, now I had to net two little goldfish, put them in a bucket, then scrub and clean their home. Of course, netting them in the green algae sludge was next to impossible. Especially Muk, the black one. What you cannot see, you cannot catch. So I had to take a small bucket and scoop out all the water except for about two inches of solid, green slime. Then I slowly tipped the tank on end and watched for Muk before pouring him out onto the frozen ground, picking him up and putting him in the bucket with his easy-to-see partner, Luk.

Until the last cold snap of the spring, both fish survived under that bare heating coil without getting burned. Thinking spring was here to stay for sure, I unplugged the heating coil as I had spent the winter worrying myself into despair about them touching it. During the night, the tank froze over solid when a cold north wind sprang up. Muk did not survive.

Now what was I going to do? Luk needed a new friend. My usual way of thinking is bigger is better, and I had heard about some Japanese koi that grew to be humongous, sometimes three feet long or more. Off to the city I went, the word koi burned onto my brain. If I was going to have fish, I was going to have huge fish!

I’ll continue this story later, when I am off the drugs my doctor prescribed to calm my shattered nerves after buying those bigger is better money-devouring, time-consuming monster fish. I also hope I make money on this book so I can quit the second job I need to support them.

CHAPTER

2

A Horse of Many Names

AT ONE TIME, MANY MOONS ago, registered horses were few and far between in my main stomping grounds in central Alberta. I generally went to a half-dozen different horse sales each month, held at the livestock auctions in the region. Rocky Mountain House, Innisfail, Rimbey, Ponoka and Stettler had some of the best sales back then. I mostly looked for two- or three-year-old prospects to pick up at a fair price for resale after a couple months of riding. This meant scouting each pen of unknown-ancestry horses with much care before the sale started.

The trick was to look them over real well outside the sale ring, and maybe even watch them being moved from their pen down the alleyway to the ring. This would give me a good idea what I would be in for once I got them home to my own corral. Horses to be avoided were the obvious knotheads, the roman-nosed ones, the pig-eyed ones, the ones with poor conformation, the crippled ones, the scarred-up ones, the ones with bad feet and the ones who preferred to go over top of you rather than around you.

Once those were passed over, I jotted down the sale number on the rumps of the ones with potential. Because I needed to make a profit after putting some miles on them, I put a question mark beside those that were likely to go higher than I wanted to pay. Those were the ones already halter broke or started and going well under saddle. Someone generally outbid me on them. I would then usually be down to a handful of range horses that hadn’t been handled much, if at all. This suited me well, as I always found that if you treated them right, they usually broke out real nice—better, in fact, than many that had been handled wrong by the previous owners.

The sale that day at Cole’s Auction Mart was a long one. I had sold one good sorrel gelding about halfway through the sale, which is prime selling time as the bidders are warmed up but haven’t spent their available money yet. My gelding worked well for me in the ring, and I was pumped with pride at the price I got for him.

I sold this big thoroughbred mare, Cheetah, at a Rocky Mountain House horse sale as green broke for an experienced rider only. She bucked me off about 30 seconds after this picture was taken. She was bought by one of Alberta’s top guides and outfitters and eventually became one of his toughest saddle horses in the mountains, even though she was never safe for dudes. GAYLE BUNNEY

But I still hadn’t bought a horse to eat the hay that the gelding would no longer be consuming. One by one, the horses on my list either went too high, or I spotted something I didn’t like about them once they were in the ring. I swear I could feel my bidding hand start to tremble from lack of use. I was starting to get that horse-buyers’ syndrome that hits us all sooner or later. You know the one I mean—better to come home with a mule than nothing at all.

And there she was. The last horse into the ring. I had not seen her out back before the sale, so knew she had been unloaded late. My mind automatically clicked off her good points: pretty head, good conformation—you could see the thoroughbred in her—her feet looked like they were in good shape, and she