So my wife likes horses. I am not a fan of them myself. They are big and skittish and untrustworthy and once when we went for a trail ride in the Adirondacks, mine tried to scrape me off on trees, boulders, shrubberies, etc., before finally dropping and rolling around on her back. (I jumped off and thus avoided injury.) Now in that case, the issue was the horse had a saddlesore that the stable hadn’t noticed1, so it wasn’t entirely2 the horse’s fault. But still.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is that when my wife and I were in college together and were getting to know each other and chatting about various things, I mentioned how when I was little I would walk to elementary school by cutting through the horse pasture behind our house, and how we were all afraid of this one big scary horse named Thunder who would always come purposefully striding over whenever he saw a human in his field. The assumption of course that he was charing us angry-bull style to pick us up with his giant head and toss us over the fence3.
Fast forward a year or so. We have graduated from college, have gotten married, and are living for a while in the village where I grew up. Naturally, my horse-loving wife would like to meet Thunder, who is still hanging out in the pasture behind our house. Well, why not? What’s the worst that could happen? We get trampled into the ground?
Anyway, we went back to the pasture (bearing gifts this time), and here came Thunder trotting over. Are you ready for a glimpse of the big scary horse? Here he is!
Now, this was a long time ago, so of course I don’t remember verbatim the conversation my wife and I had when she met Thunder, but local lore holds that it went something like this:
Wife: “He’s so cute! He’s just a pony!”
Me: “He looked bigger when I was little4. And he always came running over when he saw us.”
Wife: “He was just hoping you would give him a carrot or an apple.”
The photographic evidence would suggest that, yes indeed, Thunder came over because he was hoping for a carrot or an apple. In fact, I vaguely remember climbing an apple tree at the edge of the pasture and dropping apples for Thunder and the other horse who lived there, Goldie5, and making my escape while they were eating their treats.
So, yeah, they probably weren’t interested in running us out of their pasture. They were just looking for a little snack. But hey, it made for a good story in college, right?6
- Could we have sued? We probably could have sued … ↩︎
- Or even, in fact, a little bit. ↩︎
- As horses are wont to do. ↩︎
- I mean, look at that kid in the background. Thunder is huuuuuuuge compared to him! ↩︎
- Not pictured. ↩︎
- I posted this picture to Facebook and a number of my elementary school chums said they were also afraid of him, so it wasn’t just me. 😁 ↩︎
Viscosity 
Thunder kinda reminds me of The Beast from Sandlot, but a horse instead of a Dog. Every kid’s nightmare turns out to be a pretty chill, albeit slobbery old English Mastiff.
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I’m glad to see you and Thunder became properly acquainted later in life. He also might have been a bit slower by that time too.
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Ain’t we all!
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Maybe the horse’s size varies based on how afraid you are of it, it grows with human terror
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Ooh, now that sounds like short story material right there! 😁
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awe horses are beautiful creatures, just dont get kicked lol.
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That is a funny story.
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I get this…I have both the requisite childhood love of horses, and yet even as an adult, they are unsettling in their own (delightfully wild) way! I think I would love to have horses still, but let them just do whatever they want on my maybe-someday equally wild plots of land!
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Thunder and Goldie are good looking horses. I am not very used to horses either but I think that the stable (in the first paragraph) should have checked for saddle sores. Sending people off on a horse with a saddle sore is a pretty big mistake. Like you are suggesting maybe you could have sued.
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Absolutely hilarious story about Thunder & Goldie!! They are GIANTS!! ROFL 🙂
I DO relate to horses that try to rub us off them!! It happened quite a few times to me. Probably because I’m a lousy rider. I LOVE horses & I know in my head how to ride. Put me ON a horse & I’m a sack of potatoes! And what self-respecting horse wants a sack of potatoes on their back?? Ride on KJ ride on…James & I will watch….from a safe distance….right James?
{{hugss}} Sherri-Ellen (BellaSita Mum) & ***purrss*** BellaDharma
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Such a sweet story. Horses are very unknown creatures to me too. Until last year. We moved to a little farm and our neighbour sent over 2 of their 7 horses to help with the ‘lawn moving’ of the pasture, since the sheep only eat short grass…. and they intimidated me tremendously, they aRe big, and those hooves, could take a foot off. I’m pretty much over it now, since apples and carrots do the trick, heee heee heee.
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Ha, yeah, horses can definitely be bought off with treats! 😁
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Great story! 😂👏
When I was 11 or 12, I was riding the neighbor’s pony. The saddle wasn’t fastened tight and it rolled to port 90 degrees. Suddenly I had one foot stuck in the stirrups, my head was bouncing along the ground and the pony’s hooves were perilously close to my face as he ran back to their barn. Tiny little thing but that day he was a friggin stallion. And no sense trying to act like you’re not scared…they know!
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I didn’t even mention yet another horse on a trail ride up in the Adirondacks (yes, my wife got me to try it a second time!) whose name was Red and who didn’t like to get his feet wet. Whenever we came to a puddle or stream ― of which the Adirondacks have plenty ― Red would calculate his odds and then either jump across it if he thought it could make it, or gallop through it if he thought it was too far. And that was my final attempt at horseback riding … 😂
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Oh man…! That would be friggin terrifying… all I’d be able to picture in my mind as we approached a stream would be
1. Oh crap. Jump or gallop?
2. Probably jump. Hmm, lotsa rocks. BIG ones..
3. As Red jumps over the stream, I’m gonna fall and my head’s gonna crack open on a rock like an egg
4. D’oH! Forgot to sign that life insurance policy…
After the Christopher Reeve thing, I refused to go near them, except once when our “Indian Princess” tribe went on a trail ride and my pride as the tribe’s wampum bearer was on the line…
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