Old Boy

This Old Boy is my First Love, my Dream Horse, my Beloved...actually, not really. He was absolutely horrible as a youngster, a terror as a teenager, and it is only recently, with the commencement of his late 20's, that he is anything resembling bearable. 

Some parts of him have aged well....his blind eye, the one shown below, still looks blue but it's a pretty blue. His rich chestnut coat is still attractive, as long as you ignore the odd hairy bits that poke up in random places that probably shouldn't be quite so hairy, like his hip bone and lower legs.

His name, in case you were wondering, is Sirr John. He is not noble, nor does he behave like a prince. My father used to call him a one-eyed hay burner. 

His muzzle doesn't look too bad, considering that the man is 28 years old. Oh, I'm sorry, does this picture make you uncomfortable? So sorry. He's a Space Invader...he has no concept that he is a huge smelly horse and that perhaps you, the nice clean human, wouldn't like his giant horse schnozzle in your face.

 

Sadly, his left ear has not fared well. He had a hematoma in it five years ago and well, I won't go into details for fear you might lose your lunch all over your keyboard. Suffice it to say, if he was younger, this ear would have been amputated. But he's ancient, so we get to live with its deformed self. Poor guy.

When he was a young whippersnapper, I was, too. However, he was B. A. D. He threw me off at least once a week. The tossings were not innocent little tumbles, either....he had the unique ability to do a downward spin shoot dodge doo-wop move that never failed to dislodge me from his back. People told me, "When he's 12 years old, then he'll calm down." When he was 12 he rolled on me and broke my collarbone. It wasn't until his 20s that he began to show a few signs of relaxing his attitude a bit; when he saw a butterfly, he merely spooked and leapt sideways instead of bolting for the nearest low-hanging branch. He prepared me for motherhood quite well.

However, if I had known that this Old Boy would one day tolerate and even enjoy the ministrations of my children, then perhaps I would not have been so rage-filled as I flew through the air once again, landing smack dab on a fence, rock, tree stump, gravel driveway, etc. while he ran for the hills.

I love you, buddy boy.  Please don't die any time soon because I am too old to fall off a new horse repeatedly until he gets seasoned.

And also, some other people love you just a little bit, too.