Good grief!!

I was kicked back resting in the recliner in front of the TV when the dogs began to bark and I saw a truck pull up in the driveway.  Walked out to see if it was a politician here to discuss the vote coming up (we've had more than one of those visitors lately).  It wasn't.  The guy asked if I would tell him what color my horses were.  What?  Why?  Seems he found one in the middle of the road down by his place when he came home a few minutes earlier!  When I said sorrel with four white socks he said, well - he's down at my place now in one of my pens.  What the heck!  So he walked out to the back with me to see if the girls were still around.  They were.  But one of the side gates that goes out over on the canal side of the back pasture was off its hinges and laying part way down.  To get out of there, Duke would have had to jump over a 4 1/2" tall gate that was laying flat on the ground on the hinge end and leaning only halfway over on the other end where it was fastened to the adjoining gate with a chain halfway up.  Hmmmm.  The boy is apparently waaaay more athletic than he likes to let on that he is!  That was quite a jump!

Anyway, Mark had taken my truck over to the car dealer to have that CD player removed so I didn't have any way to pull our horse trailer, so the guy said he would just walk Duke back home along the road - he's about half a mile down.  I wasn't too happy with that since there are deep drainage ditches on both sides of the road and only about a foot or two of flat space between the ditches and the road.  So when Mark came home just a couple minutes after the guy left, he was about to hook the trailer up to the truck and go pick Duke up himself when the guy pulled in with Duke in a stock trailer.  Apparently he decided too that trying to lead him along the road wasn't all that good an idea.  Very nice of him.   Maybe the fact that Duke was acting all excited and carrying on may have had something to do with it.  I can't be sure about that . . .

but as they drove down the road and pulled into the driveway, Duke was whinnying and carrying on to beat the band inside that trailer.  Don't know if he was glad to be home, or if he was protesting not getting to hang out and get to know that guy's horses for a while, but whatever the reason he was way more vocal than usual!  

Or maybe it had to do with the fact that he could see the road moving by him in that trailer since our own trailer only has a window in the front.  In ours he can only see the back of the truck, not the road.  But whatever the reason, once he was unloaded he seemed perfectly happy to go over to his paddock and say "hello" to the girls.  While I was putting Duke up, Mark said the guy told him that when he got home, Duke was standing IN the road eating the grass along the edge.  That's typical.  He can have acres of grass and will still stick his head under the bottom fence rail and eat along the edge.  Or if he's in the front yard, he will eat along the edge of the driveway.  I guess we all have our idiosyncrasies.  Grass edging is Duke's.  (Well - one of them, anyway!)

But at least neither of the girls were willing to jump over that gate, thank goodness!  It would have sure been a LOT harder for a stranger to catch either of them.  Duke is willing to walk up to virtually anyone - he loves people without exception.  The girls don't.  Ladybug just doesn't like them.  Lizzie is afraid of them.  Bottom line -- neither of them would be nearly as easy for a stranger to grab as Duke is.  So I guess it's a good thing that if SOMEONE has to be an escape artist, it's him.  Sigh.