Moving on

Sometimes, things don't work out like a farmer (or a farmer and his herdsman) plan. Sometimes the redesign of the barn doesn't work. Sometimes the job doesn't go like it was planned. Sometimes the lamb doesn't make it. Sometimes the pony isn't a good fit.

There are times when it's difficult to make the responsible choice. It's never easy to sell something you've spent so long growing to love. It's difficult to make that "adult" decision.

I loved Ingrid the moment I laid eyes on her. She needed us as much as we didn't need her. She ran with a fluidity I had never seen in a pony before, and it amazed me. She had been bounced from home to home, and tracking down her lineage was far from easy. It took us a month to get an answer back from the Fjord Horse Association, and another six months before the results from her DNA test came back. Eight weeks before I could take her by the halter. A year and a half before she would take a cookie from Ted. Things always took time with her. A lot of time.

Rocky was a spitfire. I called him our "Donkey-in-training" because, to me, he was pure donkey. He was stubborn and sneaky. He didn't like having a long mane (donkeys don't, you know) so he would rub his mane off- and his neck raw- if I didn't keep it roached. When he worked with girls on the pony wheel he would do his best to make sure they payed attention to him. He was good at making sure they payed attention to him. When they would turn away from him to lift a kid onto his back, Rocky would turn his head and nip them on the butt. Never very hard, and never when they told him not to. He never bit a child. After all, why bite a child when you can kick the parent instead?

What we do is a business, in the end. It's a sad but true fact. Sometimes, just like with people, ponies don't work out here. Patch loves what he does. He wants to come with us. Jazzer practically glows when he sees his saddle. Truffles will bully her way into the trailer.

Rocky wasn't happy. He needed a backyard and a bratty spoiled princess to be at his best. I hold out hope that he got that.

We weren't Ingrid's forever home. I wish we could have been, I really do, but we weren't. We didn't have the time, the training, or the funds to keep her. We understood that.

Sometimes, in a farmer's life, you have to sell what you don't want to. You have to cull the herd. And you have to learn to accept it. I'm trying.