Over the winter, I had to leave the corral and go to work as The Waitress over at the Roadhouse. It was pretty hard to leave my herd to languish in the corral. I started advertising for some help and the Universe started sending me young folks that wanted to work with horses.
Hmmm… they started getting frustrated that I was rarely home to teach them something.
Hmmm… okay, take turns going over to the cafe, earn some tips, and I will stay home and teach you something on the days when you are home. They jumped at the chance. The Roadhouse is a fun place to work.
Hey, it was a home run! I was home five days a week and had four eager assistants. I gave them reading and DVD assignments and they made a lot of progress. Then as traveling kids are wont to do, they moved on. I updated my ad, and pretty soon I had a handful of applicants planning their summer vacations around coming to Largo.
One of the things that happened while I was at the Roadhouse set up the other side of the equation. Dan Elkins started stopping in for breakfast after his long nights on the Jicarilla Ranger District catching mustangs. If I had a chance I would sit down with him and discuss our favorite topic: MUSTANGS. I will write a whole post about Dan later, but let’s just say he got me thinking about using mustangs to teach horsemanship.
I have the students, the school, heck… maybe the Forest Service could provide a couple of wild horses??? I called Anthony Madrid and explained what I was thinking of doing…. maybe.. if any horses were left after the auction?
They had 28 in the pen when I got there on Saturday. Hmmm… there would probably be a few left to choose from on Monday. All of the horses captured this time were dark bay or black. Bob Browning started extolling the virtues of two small geldings in the center pen. The mare and foal were nice. I figured my choices would be the most homely. I studied the older animals who would also certainly be left behind. Well, we’d pick up the mustangs on Tuesday so we could only speculate until then….