May 5, 2023. Cinco de Mayo.

Early Morning.

As I walked out to check on the mares I saw Maggie staring at me from around the corner of the big shed. The red flag in my brain popped up right away. Maggie is probably in labor. She is due and ready.

As I approached the gate to the back paddocks, Rio comes on the gallop. She isn’t due to foal for a couple more weeks. I have been feeding some oats and she usually comes pretty promptly but it was pretty easy to see she was more excited than usual.

Maggie’s daughter Pricilla was the giveaway. She was at the other side of the shed. She would look at me and then look over to where Maggie was behind the shed. Then look back at me and then back again to Maggie. I knew I had missed the foaling. Now to hope all went well.

As I rounded the corner, Maggie comes to meet me. “Nothing here to see but perhaps you brought oats,” was her attitude. But… her belly was not the giant barrel she has been packing around the last few weeks. The moment she saw that I saw what was standing just a few feet behind her, she gave up the guise and we both went to see the new baby, a very colored, big dun and white colt with the cutest head. He needs a bit of “unfolding” (it can take a few days to stretch out those tendons after being all curled up in what was becoming a pretty cramped space) but he is quite beautiful and healthy.

Meeting new baby horses is always a thrill for me. I love them. I also have a strong sense of responsibility as I also know that I cannot keep them. I am old. If I choose to raise babies, I must find them good homes. They will probably outlive me. For a horse, not getting to a “good” home can mean not getting the care and training required to become a trusting and valued partner to a caring human. A scroll down most social media sites that have horses for sale will confirm this observation. Educating a young horse requires some skill and a lot of experience. Our little fantasies about them becoming well trained in spite of our inexperience but love for them can be a death sentence for them just as being trained by someone who doesn’t feel a bond with them can eliminate a good future for them too.

I like to encourage young people to love horses and learn to ride. The young lady who was scheduled to come and ride this afternoon arrived and, of course, we went to see the baby and then noticed that the old mare Josie who, along with Twenty can go up the pasture didn’t come home with Twenty.

We saddled Eddie and Karl and after checking that my young riding partner wasn’t going to be traumatized with what we might be coming upon when looking for a 28 year old mare who didn’t come home with the herd, we headed up the pasture. The further we rode without seeing her, the more convinced I became that this wasn’t going to end well and once again offered my young friend an option to go back home. She assured me she was up to what we might find. I am actually quite prepared for and ok with old horses spending their last hours on their pasture. One thing ranch life teaches you is that where there is life, there is death.

As we approached the last draw where her body could be hiding, up over the hill comes Josie, all alert and her mane blowing back in the wind, ears pricked forward towards us, whinnying a greeting. She loped over to us.

She is the grandmother of the baby who was born that morning. I was happy that she got to come home and greet her new grandson.

There were a lot of emotional highs and lows this Cinco de Mayo for me, for the whole herd here at the ranch and for my young friend.