I'm not going to look up what a buckaroo is, yet claim to be one by guessing it means a person who tolerates horses for one reason or another. I am definitely not a cowboy, (rhinestone or otherwise) and the title greenhorn (which I may be) doesn't appeal to me. I know a few things about horses, such as, they don't get mumps or measles, but do get bots or founder, and you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them hitchhike unless you glue thumbs to their hoofs.

            My 12-year-old daughter, despite bumps, bruises and broken bones thinks horses are the greatest thing since sliced bread. She reads, sleeps and eats (scratch eats) horses. Guess what her pick for this year's Oscar was? Yep, "The Black Stallion". I didn't realize there were so many horse magazines to subscribe to till they started coming in the mail. Most of the letters she writes are to horse clubs, and all of the pictures she draws (three-a-night) are of            (fill in the blank). I get a little nervous when I wonder what the person she marries will look like. With the price of alfalfa, I secretly hope she marries a hay farmer.

            My experiences with horses before my daughter bought one weren't the most pleasant. Pleasant memories are: One of Fox Island's old timers, Mr. Betz, had one or two he hooked up to a cart and drove to the Sylvan Store; another old timer, Fred Turver, had a pony ranch; Mrs. Cook and my dad had a horse named Dick plow between the grape rows by the church. Pleasant memories stop there. When I was nine or ten the Rob Nelson's (owners of the Sylvan Store) boarded a trotter for pony cart racing named Daisy Mae for a summer in our pasture. When Daisy Mae didn't do well in racing, they decided to saddle break her with me as the saddle goat. My total experience at that time was one ride on a pony at the end of a pole at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. "That's more than enough experience", I was assured. Actually, everybody else present was just too big. After about half of a day trying to get the saddle on the pony, I was ready to break that mare. Over a period of two or three days I must have spent two or three seconds in the saddle. At one point the horse reared up and brought her hoofs down on the spokes of the front wheel of my bike. What a mess!

            I only tried riding two other times in my youth, and both times the horse knew how to humiliate me. I was bucked off once and knocked off with a tree limb with the other. It seems to me that I must have successfully ridden a horse at some time or another in my life, but I sure don't recall it. The last ride I took was by accident about three years ago when our daughter got a pony named Gina from the Feagin's. Gina (a Fox Island pony) had gotten out of her pen and I thought I'd stop her as she ran past. I hadn't figured that a 300 pound pony at full gallop can't be stopped by grabbing it around the neck. I took a 25 yard ride (the longest in my life) that ended very abruptly when she stepped on my foot. Since then we have become good buddies, and she is more like a dog than a horse.

            Our second horse was a gelding that was a little bigger and didn't take much of a liking to me. This is the only horse that has bitten and kicked me twice. He was a good manure producer, though. Did you know that only chicken manure is higher in nitrogen than horse manure? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, hopefully, we have our final horse. At this point I don't really know where we (the horse and I) stand, but it seems and looks nice, plus it's big enough to hold me. I have spent a few seconds on its (another gelding) back so far, but before too long I hope to change my status from buckaroo to cowboy.