Thursday, June 17, 2010

My Dad & Big Red aka Red the 2nd

Our palomino mare (Hi I AM SWEET was the name on her papers, but we just called her Sweet) gave birth to a lovely sorrel foal. I forgot his real name. To register a foal you have to send in three choices and they let you know if any are available.By the time they let us know what his "name" was I had been calling him Red the 2nd for so long it had stuck. As he grew up and grew HUGE we started calling him Big Red.

Big Red's Mom was  a bit of a space cadet, so he often followed me and Silver when we went riding. Halter breaking him was a bit of a challenge as he ran right past me ripping the rope out of my hands. Daddy didn't blink an eye he just took over and when Big Red started to run past him he picked him up and flipped him on his back. After trying that a few more times with the same results Big Red stopped doing that and after that halter breaking him was a snap as he followed me around anyway now he just had a halter and a rope on.

On evening after Daddy had been out to the land to feed Big Red went down to the creek to get a drink of water and got bitten by a moccasin. He ran back to the barn churning up the ground along the way and leaving the dead moccasin for Daddy to find. Daddy found Big Red the next morning. After months of Daddy nursing him back to health (which involved washing his wound out with salt water and clearing his eyes and nose of mucus) Big Red was fine.

By Alasandra

2 comments:

Jans Funny Farm said...

Alasandra, thanks for entering our Father's Day giveaway. Good story about your dad and Big Red. We're so glad he nursed Big Red back to health after the snake bite. No wonder you're so concerned about water moccasins on your property and your animals.

ocmist said...

Just came over to find out a bit more about you. Thanks for visiting Corgi Country! Sounds like the way MY Dad would have handled that colt. My Dad helped me to learn a lot about training all kinds of animals. He loved goats, too. After he passed away, I was given his wallet which had pictures of each of us kids, a family picture and TWO pictures of his pet goat from when he was a kid.