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| Happy birthday, old man! |
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| Nice shot, Evelyn! |
One thing I regret about Dancer is not knowing her exact birthday. I know the year she was born but celebrating Stoney’s birthday has long been a family tradition. Sometimes we get into baking cakes and making him wear silly birthday hats but usually, he prefers less ostentatious celebrations. Today, he spent all day grazing, had several mouthfuls of carrots and his favorite little girls doting on him.
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| Kate watching Stoney out in the yard. |
I always wanted to be able to have horses in my backyard and to teach my children how to ride on the horses I learned how to ride on. Stoney is a fulfillment of that dream in many ways. He has a good life, and he deserves it.
His age is starting to catch up with him now. It’s harder to keep enough weight on him over the winter (Dancer still has a thick layer of fat she didn’t burn through–“easy keeper” is her mantra. His back is a bit more swayed, he’s long in the tooth and little patches of white hair that he didn’t have before are poking through. Horses don’t age like people, in a gradual bell curve. Instead, they spike from babyhood to a mature youth, where they spend a good portion of their lives, then quickly and noticeably, become aged–too quickly, he has become the old man. It doesn’t matter though. I’m hoping for another ten years (at least!) with good ol’ Stoney, even if all he ever was was a glorified yard ornament.
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| Being doted on by his three favorite girls. |
