My recollection is that my brother Tom and my cousin Carol (co-author of this blog) were the dual think tank for this adventure. I was a co-conspirator however.
Mule was the kid horse pictured in the initial post to this blog. He was a very gentle and patient buckskin gelding who had been relegated to the job of providing transportation and entertainment for the kids on the ranch. He never kicked, even though his tail was used as a mode of mounting his back when no fence was available. He never bit even though he probably should have....more Mule stories later....
On with the story....one fine sunny morning, Carol's mom, Marian, left to drive into Collbran (about a 16 mile drive) for some grocery items leaving Carol and her siblings home with my mom down the road a piece to take care of any emergencies. We kids had Mule bridled up. We were not allowed to use a saddle, unless we were with adults, due to the dangers of falling and catching a foot in a stirrup and being dragged by a panicked horse.
Somewhere in someone's mischievous brain, the idea surfaced to see if we could get Mule to climb the 12 or so steps to the back door of Aunt Marian's house. This new idea came to us from watching western TV shows where the cowboys always rode horses into the saloons. With some "encouragement".... pulling the bridle reins, pushing his rear end and using a willow switch for extra incentive to keep moving......Yep, he made it up with no problem and the next devilish idea was to see if he would go INTO the house. A few steps later, Mule was in the laundry room where her balked, backed up and left a suspicious Mule-sized indent in the screen door....and.....then..voila..into the kitchen!
It was at about that time when we heard Aunt Marian's car coming up the road! Immediate panic hit. We had to get Mule out of the house and fast. However, turning a horse around in the narrow kitchen and getting him to move quickly to the front door was a task that, alas, didn't go well for us. He was clopping through the living room and has made it partially out of the front door when Aunt Marian came in through the back door as his rump disappeared. She looked at us very suspiciously. She asked what we had been up to and, of course, we replied "oh, nothing," but when she gave us her knowing look (she had a very good mother's alert system), and asked what Mule was doing in the front yard, we confessed. To give her credit, she wasn't mad, only very amused and burst into gales of Aunt Marian laughter, a wonderful sound, by the way. Luckily for us, he left no horse apples behind.
This horse story spread fast and has never been forgotten by those who were there and those who weren't (but wished they had been...)! We didn't do that again, but imagination brought many more events in our free, growing up days on the Ranch. How lucky we were.
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