Experience the ENDURANCE of Foundation Breeding
Sarah and Sam Exposed
(Also known as "Whoopi Saves The Day" July 20, 2007)
Sometimes, we need to follow our gut, no matter what it's saying. I arrived at the barn to find Sarah and Sam leaving in the buggy with Izabel. Or, I should say - ATTEMPTING - to leave the barn in the buggy. They were headed out the road in a very haphazard manner. For whatever reason, Izabel was not happy to be leaving the barn. She kept stopping, turning and trying to come back.
Now, I have driven Izabel many times, and she came from an Amish family, so she sure as hell knows what her job is. First, I thought maybe because she heard my car that she thought it might be feeding time. Second, I noticed Sarah had a pretty tight grip in the reins, so maybe she just needed some freedom. Third, I thought, "This is not a good day for Izabel, I should tell them to come on back in the barn."
Ohhhh, I should FOLLOW MY GUT INSTINCT.
4:05 PM - I give Sarah some instructions, they get Izabel moving down the road and I go up in the barn to start the evening chores before Kids Peace girls arrive for their two hour "Yee Haw" session on the horses. Things went pretty smoothly (actually) and I swiftly finished up the feeding and watering. I noticed the four stalls that needed to be done, didn't get done and there was a note from Sarah that her and Sam were going on a buggy ride and would clean stalls when they got back.
I had some time to burn before Vera arrived with the grinning ear to ear girls. I was going to clean one of the stalls, then thought, "Nope, Sarah is capable, I'll go do something else."
Once again, I should FOLLOW MY GUT INSTINCT.
4:50 PM - It's been about an hour and I was expecting the girls back shortly. I had decided to clean up the loose hay in the arena. As I was toiling with the dust, sweat and hay particles swimming around me, I look up and there they are...Sarah and Sam walking down the back aisle towards me.
They're both white as ghosts, look like they just lost their best friend, and are looking at everything but me. It took me a blond moment but ....
Oh my god. Two girls and no horse and buggy. My GUTS just fell through the floor.
Ever mindful of keeping the clam facade in the barn, I put on my Dodie face and asked.
"Had a nice walk, did ya? Do I dare ask where Izabel is?"
Sarah's eyes are gleaming with unshed tears as she replies, "We lost her."
Huh? I was afraid to ask, and just as I opened my mouth to inquire as to how a 1500 pound horse attached to a 300 pound geren buggy gets lost, they both start talking a mile a minute and I can't understand either one of them. Something about backing into a culvert, and hopping out to get the buggy unstuck, and Izabel running up the road without her drivers and coming back to the barn to get in Sarah's cara and go look for her.
I'm not sure, it was very confusing. Have you ever talked to ONE teenager? Try listening to TWO, speaking at the same time, with an edge of hysteria coloring their speech patterns.
I finally put my hands up to ward of their intense emotional onslaught. Instant silence. I'm glad that the "Mommy Hand" still works, even though mine are all grown up (snicker)
I quickly assess what needs to be done and remain low key as I give them instructions.
"Okay. No problem. You lost the horse. Now, go find her."
And they RAN out of the barn. This is not an exaggeration. They FLEW through the arena and down the front aisle. I suspect they were more afraid of me killing them if they stayed any longer than they were anxious to get on the road looking for Izabel and the missing green buggy.
(chuckle)
Now, while they were talking a mile a minute, I did the "Dodie Assessment" of them (surreptitiously) as they babbled on and on about how Izabel ran up the road, turned to the left and was never to be seen again. They both appeared in good health, no blood anywhere, no bones sticking out through the skin, both eyeballs in place and no visible signs of bruising. (yet) So I wasn't worried about them. I was more worried about Izabel getting hit by a car during Friday Night Rush To Get Home traffic.
They were barely out the door and down the driveway when I saw Vera and the KP Kids arriving in their gray van.
Oh my gosh. I can't leave to go help on the search and rescue mission. That's okay, Izabel couldn't have gone TOO far.
5:55 PM - The first hour, I was able to concentrate on the girls. But as the minutes began passing and I hadn't heard from anyone, I started to get very concerned for my poor horsie. Gary showed up and I calmly sent him to find Sarah and Sam. (Notice the word calm...I was anything BUT calm inside, I was afraid they found her, killed by a car, and they ran away from home never to be heard from again. How the heck was I going to explain THAT to their parents?)
Gary goes out in his truck, finds them and in minutes returns to the barn with news. "No Izabel yet." Well, that wasn't the news I was expecting to hear. How can you be looking for a horse for an hour and not find her? It's not like we live in this totally isolated area! There are houses and people everywhere. SURELY, someone noticed a redhead taking an empty buggy for a stroll?
I ask him if Sarah or Sam gave him any information on how this happened. He gives me the low down...apparently, they BOTH got out the buggy to get Izabel out of a culvert they got her into and when Izabel realized she was ALONE and driverless, she took off for the hills.
Smart horse.
So, Gary saddles up Mack and hits the trail. He honestly looked like a mounted policeman on the back of the giant gelding as he trotted out the back arena doors.
Now, I'm anxious. Gary said they called the police and a lady had called in to report the redhead stealing the buggy, but no-one has heard another peep since that initial report about a runaway stagecoach with Indians in close pursuit.
6:30 PM - I'm trying to be a good instructor and keep the KP Girls entertained. Three girls today. One gung ho rider, one never been on a horse in my life rider and one just want to pet the horses not-a-rider. It was an interesting mix of girls so I kept them in the barn to play today. My gut told me I'd be safer in the barn.
Okay, I have six plans banging into each other as they march around my head. I figure there are 4 people in cars out there looking so eventually someone is going to find them. Plan one is to get the trailer hooked up because I'm sure I will need it ready to spring into action when the call comes they've found the wreck. Plan two is to call Marc and have him bring the motorcycle to the barn so I can get off road and chase around the back fields. Plan three involves valium. Plan four leaves me needing a front end loader and a big hole in the manure pile. Plan five and six are too outrageous to even write in this story for fear that someone reading it will turn me into the Animal Welfare department.
I can't imagine that Izabel didn't come home. She knows every inch of road and trail around here, she should have been home by now. In fact, she should have beat the girls home the first time. That concerns me more than anything else is that she got hit by a car or she got picked up by some Amish Young Stud Muffin and he's hysterical with happiness because he's been begging God to give him a new horse. I can picture his prayers tonight, "Thank you, Lord for giving me a nice driving mare and the added bonus of a nice green buggy. I will take excellent care of them and I promise not to give them back to the horrible owner who let her run around town all alone with no protection. Amen"
And imagine his girlfriend's delight when he says they can finally get married because he now has a new "car". She's going to have her own prayers to say, "Thank you, God for this bountiful blessing I have been waiting and waiting to be Ishmel's wife and I promise to take better care of this mare than her previous owners who allowed her to alley cat around town like some floozie. Amen."
Dag Nabbit, those Amish people make me mad, stealing my horse like that.
Oh, back to reality.
Last weekend when Vera arrived, I had just returned from rescuing Alec from a auto versus motorcycle accident. He was on the motorcycle. Thankfully, even though it was Friday the 13th, that same God that gave away my horse today, saved my boy's life last Friday. So, I guess I should be thankful all God asked for in exchange was one horse and buggy. Alec walked away from a totaled car and totaled motorcycle with only a scratch on his nipple and a sore ankle. Amazing.
Back to the missing horse saga.
Vera will probably never bring the girls back to my barn. One adventure after another. As she packed the girls up she promised to do some reconnaissance for me on her way out. I gave her a general idea where Izabel might be and off they went a horse hunting.
I hopped into my car and started the circuit. I passed Gary three times, stopped and talked to many neighbors, passed Sarah's Dad once, and still no Izabel.
Okay, time to do this the right way. Only way to find a horse is to think like a horse. If I was a horse, I'd be in the middle of someone's field, eating myself sick. Only way to find a horse eating itself sick is while riding a horse that would like to join that first horse and make a party of it.
I drive back to the barn thinking of all the horses I could take. Suddenly it struck me the best one to take was Whoopi. She's fast, knows all the tails around here, and the best part, she's such a barn bunny that when I found Izabel, I could turn Whoopi loose and she'd come on home.
The added bonus is that I could leave out of the barn like my ass was on fire and scream all over those fields in no time flat. Whoopi wasn't named Whoopi after some TV actress! Trust me on this one.
Brilliant! A plan that makes some sense.
7:25 PM - I saddle Whoopi up and after I got on realized that I had no idea what she was going to think of this treeless saddle that puts me right on her back so she can feel everything I do. She's a wee bit sensitive to riders that are not Walt. In fact, I don't really think anyone has ever had a nice ride on her but Walt...and me, two times while he was on vacation over the years.
(shrug)
Oh, well - she'll get over it. We're off a horse hunting.
We rip up turf as we gallop up the back hill.
We get tears in our eyes from the wind as we scream across Dale's newly mown timothy field.
We can't see but who cares as we blast through Mr. Beltzel's corn field.
We race past the Mennonite sheep farm, the clippity-clop of her feet on pavement a loud change from the turf riding we've just been doing..
WAIT.....WHOA WHOOPI, WHOA.
Damn, this mare is hard to stop when she's moving.
STOP DAMMIT.
Are those buggy tracks going through the burn of the road and down past the sheep farm? It's hard to tell as we circle round and round at a trot because Whoopi is just warming up and can't for the life of her figure out why I would want to stop NOW! They sure are fresh buggy tracks. The grass it still slowly unbending. Damn, I should have been an Indian Scout.
Wait a minute! I am an Indian Scout.
Alright, we've found a place to start. Go get 'em, Whoopi.
The buggy tracks lead us through the front lawn of some guy's house. He's on his back porch and yells at us. I yell back an apology and explain I'm searching for a missing horse attached to a buggy with no driver, did he see it pass through here about two hours ago? Nope, he just got home from work a couple minutes ago and came out to fire up the bar-b-q grill. He waves me on and leave impressions in his nice grass as we sail along after the buggy tracks.
We jump over a ditch and run pell-mell through someone's soy field (Sorry someone, I'm not sure who this field belongs to). I'm hot in pursuit, following buggy tracks. All the while I'm trying to talk on my cell phone to Marc. I want him to call Hamburg State Police and see if Izabel has been reported found to them. This is NOT a good plan. Cell phones should be banned from horse back.
"Bye Marc, can't talk now." Whee. Whoopi is truly setting track records today.
We round the sheep field and follow the tire tracks back up along another corn field to the road.
WHOA WHOOPI, WHOA!
Oh, my poor achey shoulder, she's ripping them out of the sockets because she has no intention of stopping now....Not when she's found another rider that lets her go as fast as she want to go.
STOP YOU FREAKIN" DENSE MARE. I yank her to the side and...
Screech.
I almost fly out the front of the saddle.
Dammit.
I see fresh scrapes on the driveway across from the corn field. I look some more and see buggy tracks in the field heading towards the woods.
OH NO!
I pick my way carefully through Mr. Hunsicker's lawn, he's a nice old man and I don't want to make him mad by tearing up his front lawn. He lets us come up the back field and cross his corn field to get to Deer Run Road. He's gonna be mad if he sees me on the lawn that he specifically told us to avoid at all costs.
OH NO! The tracks continue into the woods, tearing through raspberry bushes and down into a ravine.
Come on, Whoopi. Let's find her.
Picking our way through the stickly bushes (and yes, I'm in shorts and barefooted so my legs are getting shredded) we see the tracks headed up towards the house. I exit the woods and ...
8:05 PM - ... there she is. Standing calmly by the house. With three piles of crap laying in his nice, freshly sealed macadam driveway. Oh, boy, she's been here for awhile. Harness is still intact. Buggy is still attached. She looks perky and I don't see blood. So why is she just standing there?
I leap off Whoopi ... and this is done at a full trot because Whoopi's not stopping now. The barn is on the other side of this here hill and she's going home.
I pull her into me and tied the rein to the saddle. I figure I'll send her home and the message to the barn people is, "The reins are tied, so I obviously didn't fall off." I would have called them on the cell phone, but I don't have any of their numbers programmed into my cell phone. Dumb.
Off Whoopi goes. She's looking towards the horizon with images of hay and grain in her eyes. Good grief.
I walk over to Izabel and check her all over. She nickers to me as if to say, "What took you so long?" I gather up the reins and turn her ... no, I don't ... the buggy isn't budging. I look back and the right tire is mashed into the frame. No wonder Izabel was standing so quietly. In Amish terms, the buggy brake was set so she knew she was to stand until someone came to tell her to move on.
(sigh)
She stands very calmly while I disconnect the harness. I have to tell you, this is the absolute nicest mare you've ever met. She is wonderful. Never budged while I unhooked her. Walked forward nice as pie to escape the shafts. And as I start for home over the hill, she never once pulls on me or gets anxious. Nice nice mare.
I look back over my shoulder at the buggy sitting in the driveway and take a deep breath. I guess I'll get the trailer and come back for the buggy. It's FUBAR.
We walked through the 6 foot high environmentally appealing grasses and flowers and other stuff the DEP planted in the field behind the barn two years ago. This stuff sucks. I can't see anything. Well, okay, I can see that poison ivy I just walked through. For Pete's Sake.
I turn Izabel loose when we get into sight of the barn and she calmly walks on down to it. Well, until she met Winter in the back paddock, then she had to stop and visit. Everyone was waiting in the back driveway and saw Izabel without me. Man, what they must have thought. First, Whoopi arrives alone, then Izabel arrives alone. Wonder if they thought I was dragging the buggy home by myself.
(snicker)
Gary and Cody came with me in the trailer to get the buggy. After looking at it, Gary believe he can fix it. I'm skeptical but figure it's worth a shot.
I'm gonna let Sam and Sarah write the adventure of "How This All Started When We Got Exposed" and I'll post it here. I think it should come from their mouths. They did it.
Needless to say, everyone arrived home in good health, fine attitude and we can all sleep well tonight.
Instructor/Manager: Dodie Sable
Located in New Smithville PA at 37 Fenstermacher Road, 3 miles north of Kutztown University
Call us at 610.756.3836 or email us at dodie@newpromisefarms.com