The Pony Quest
You meet all kinds when you're out searching for a new horse or pony. This one I won't forget. Ever. I wish I had the money to save all of them. (This is an excerpt from a larger piece.)
Later that afternoon, a man hauled from his lopsided shed a terrified-looking sorrel gelding not quite 14 hands high, manhandling the pony like it was some kind of wild bronco. And when he turned the pony around to tie him to a fence post, I was startled to see that the little fellow's lower jaw was jutting out like a bulldog's, bottom teeth protruding. The man hadn't told me about this when I inquired after the pony over the telephone. "Broken jaw," he grumbled at me, almost daring me with his glowering eyes to say something about it, go ahead, his swagger taunted, as all of a sudden he was hollering loud enough to set that pony back on it's haunches, "Hey you kids! You get back inside that house right now!" to the three or four children who were half hanging out of the open windows of the doublewide, anxious to see the strangers in their driveway.
I cast a beseeching look at my husband. You know, the man who can read my mind. He knew I wanted to rescue that pony right out of there, right then, as quickly as possible, but he took me by the arm, nodded at the man who'd just tossed a saddle on the down-and-out pony's back like a fifty-pound bag of sand, and said, "Let's go." As we got back in the truck he reminded me that I can't save all of them.
I still think about that pony sometimes.
