Rural Heritage June/July 2025

Sure enough, when we get to the fence, there stands three Belgian mares, all looking about alike in color and size, but two of them are slicker and fatter and actually have a few harness marks on them like someone has worked them recently. “Friend” goes on to explain how he wanted to help me out, so he went down and looked the Craiglist mares over and watched them work. He had explained my situation to the former owner and, saint that he was, he agreed I should have the mares for $1,000. Now, here again the red flags should have gone up and I should have not backed away but ran away from this situation. No horse trader ever suddenly had an attack of having a heart and dropped two hundred dollars out of sympathy. It just doesn’t happen like that, except maybe in certain horse books written for little girls and made-for-TV movies.“Friend” went on to explain

that the horses had only one problem he could see since he brought them home, and I, being a good horseman, should have no problem at all. Since they had been turned out on pasture, they had been all but impossible to catch. Another red flag. I hate an animal “hard to catch” worse than anything. There is nothing more frustrating than going out to work and spending half a day chasing your power source around and around the pasture before spending the second half trudging down furrows behind a walking plow in the hottest part of the day. It should also be noted that “friend” used one of the oldest tricks in the book here. He told me of the fault but coupled it with a compliment. I was a good handler of horses. I should be able to deal with anything these two could throw at me. I had to live up to my reputation. And so I did.

June/July 2025

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