E-Bob-a-Ho: Part One

     Bob celebrated his eighteenth birthday on April 18.  In horse years he is 54.  However he still acts like a teenager.  From the moment he was born he was a character.  A mottled grey-black, he was all legs and tried for a while to figure out how to use them.  As he followed his mom around, Crystal our Siberian husky, was following him.  Curious and smelling, she got to close and quick as lightening, Bob kicked her in her chest.  Their relationship was ruined from that point on.
    He was a pleasant surprise.  When I bought his mother, the prettiest black mare I had ever seen, no one knew that she was pregnant.  I noticed that even though she was getting the same amount of food as Honey Babe and Major Midnight(nicknamed Major Medical), I noticed that she was really putting on the weight.  I began to suspect that a little one was on the way and had her vet-checked.  Yep, she was.
     On the day he was born, we all gathered round and gazed in wide wonder at the joy we had found.  Sorry, I had to throw that in.  Sheila, who has a way with animals said, "This one is going to be aggravating."  Maybe it was because he had just run through the barb wire fence.  We handled him all over and poked and prodded him everywhere, yes, to get him used to being handled.
     We had sold our house and was in the process of building another one when he was born.  For a month after he was born, all the horses stayed at the old place.  Sheila and I were finishing up the barn at the new place.  The house and barn were finished at about the same time.  We moved ourselves in first and after we were settled, we then brought over the horses.  Bob's mother Princess, was always easy to load and we had no trouble with her.  E-Bob-a-Ho on the other hand was a total jerk-off.  At his young age, he had already developed an attitude and there was no way in hell he was going to go into that trailer.  I had never had a halter on him and he was loose as a goose and crazy as a loon.  After a few minutes, I knew that I had to do something different.  I unloaded Princess, who was getting nervous about her unruly child and tied her up in her stall.  Bob soon followed her in, to satisfy his hunger and need for protection.  When he settled in for a meal, I eased the stall door shut.  Using cast off plywood, I made a makeshift hallway to the trailer.  The little bugger had been watching me work my tail off and was laughing to himself, about the mischief he had caused.  As soon as I opened the stall door, he bolted down the short hall and bounded into the trailer.  He stood proudly and patiently at the tie-down in the front of the trailer while I loaded Princess.  Now he was content to be in the trailer and I realized that I had lost the first round of chess.