Bo the Clown

I’ve taken to feeding Sam his nightly beet pulp right after I get home from work. That little bit of extra time gives him just enough time to have almost his entire dish polished off after I come back out to start graining the other hard keepers and getting the nightly hay ready. I hate rushing Sam as his beet pulp is the main supplement and the hay isn’t really helping any more. I’ve come to the conclusion that I just can’t say goodbye yet. I’ll wait until the new year before I make the decision, but for now Sam will remain with us as long as his ulcers are held off with the use of the ulcer powder. The power is working but it’s not as good as the paste from the vet.

Sometimes, as the case was the other day, I try to get some of the others in to the barn for their nightly grain right after I get home from work (before I even go in the house to let the little monster dog out). I decided I’d get Jim and Bo started on their nightly grain the other night and then head in to change clothes and find my coveralls.

When I returned to the barn, bundled for the cold weather, Bo was happily enjoying himself. He’d managed to confiscate an empty grain bag. He has the horrible habit of grabbing a bite of grain and then hanging his head over the stall wall, wherein he loses some of his grain (he had his teeth floated this summer…he’s just a messy eater). Apparently the bag he confiscated had some of that allusive grain.

As I stood there watching him, he licked the bag clean and then proceeded to pick up the bag and swing it all around his stall to see if he could get any grain out of it. Once he was done flinging the bag around, he continued with the licking to see if there was anything extra. Bo had me in stitches. I didn’t want to make my presence known because then he’d stop. But it was so hard to not fall over with laughter. Bo is such a ham.

It’s hard to believe where Bo might have ended had Borderlands not been there to pull him that fateful March day. Bo is such a sensitive horse; I can’t imagine the emotions he was feeling before, during, and after the auction. I don’t know if Bo is just a “happy-go-lucky” type of horse or if he knows that he’s now in a safe place. I feel a little closer to him than to others and I’m not sure if it’s because Bo has that experience of going through an auction and knowing that we were there to help or if he’s just that happy of a horse. I’ll never really know. I have discovered that older horses pulled from auctions have a better appreciation for what we do. Maybe I’ve just been lucky with the few we’ve pulled, but it seems like each of those particular horses show a bit of gratitude. Maybe I’m just crazy for thinking such a thing. All I know is that I am so very grateful to have Bo in our lives and I will enjoy every minute that I am allowed the opportunity to share in his life. I have decided it is my mission to spread the word of Bo’s story so that other horses don’t have to go through the same horrors that he went through.