Carol Moncado

This post has to do with horses.

For those of you who read this “teaser” on my Carol Moncado Books Facebook page:

Working on a series of blog posts regarding today’s four legged guardian angel. Wanna know how big an animal? And what happened? Keep an eye open for the links to the first post later tonight :).

the first statement above may seem like a “spoiler” for what kind of animal, but you’ll have to read on. We have lots of animals around here – we even saw three wild turkeys today!

But because this story has to do with horses, it brings to mind a number of people who will likely be tagged when this posts to Facebook ;).

Candy Calvert – my very dear writer friend. Brenda and Becky – my first horse owning friends [Brenda was my bestie in 1st and 2nd grade, her twin Becky and I didn’t particularly get along, unless Brenda was sick – but Becky and I outgrew it ;)]. Penny, Angie, Paula, Ed, Amanda, Sarah, and assorted other people who work with my hubs. Mary Connealy, Karen Witemeyer, Erica Vetsch and assorted other writers of historical/western fiction. NovelSista Jessica Keller whose first book [out next month!!!!!!] has horses in it.

So yeah – lots of peeps, but mostly Candy honestly, for reasons that I hope will be apparent a couple of segments from now – running through my mind.

Okay – so my husband is a licensed therapist – he runs a group therapy program at a local residential facility for boys, mostly ages 12-18 or so. This facility is also a working ranch. They have cattle and horses and a couple donkeys and some ranch dogs [they stink!] and so on.

There’s a guy who lives not too far from my house who lets them hay his land and right now, about 15 of their horses are living on about 50 acres. It’s a couple miles from my house and I drive by there on the way to work. The ranch folks had asked us to drive by every so often and, you know, make sure the horses are there ;).

So, last night, when I heard we’re supposed to get snow next week, I thought, “Hey, I should take the kids over there and feed the horses and take some pics and stuff.”

[No commentary on anything, please. It was an idea. We can debate how good the idea was later ;).]

I mentioned it to Matt who talked to the peeps at the ranch and they okayed us going out there. Said it would be best if the horses came to the fence but – at least from what I got from Matt – didn’t seem too concerned about us climbing over/through the gate. The horses out in the field are horses the boys at the ranch ride regularly and are comfortable with people etc.

I had to be at the kids’ school for a meeting at 230, so the kids didn’t get on the bus but went with me when school got out. We went to Walmart, picked up apples and carrots, talked to a nice checker-out lady who owns horses about how to feed them, went home for a quick bathroom break then headed to the field.

We parked, emptied the apples and carrots out of the bags into the Walmart bag and climbed over/through the gate.

Telling the kids to avoid the horse doo whenever possible, we walked up a hill and around this bit of trees [there will be pics tomorrow]. On the far side of the field, all the horses were congregated.

Then they saw us.

Tomorrow: Stampede! 😉