Duke & Donkey

This is the sight I came out to Thursday morning. We had done our taxes on wet and cool, fire in the stove all day Wednesday, and had decided to drive the 20 miles to town on Thursday to mail them and have our celebratory dinner (that is lunch down here) out. I don't believe we have ever before, in all our years together, actually mailed the things before the 15th. Being self-employed, what we pay hurts us. I hate taxes. I hate most of the ways taxes are used. I'd rather the road by our place be gravel, people could afford health care if the government weren't involved in it to inflate it, and there is no right to retire to uselessdom on the backs of the next generation.

Ah, but, we didn't owe what we thought we would, and we had them done a day early, and it was beautiful, and when I walked outside to sip some coffee in the sunshine, Duke was just laying down, just gathering his dinner plate sized hooves underneath him, bending hock and knee until he had lowered his mass about halfway down, and then, PLOP, with a big grunt. I couldn't help myself, it didn't matter what else I needed to do before our departure, I was taking those few minutes to enjoy that monster horse.

He'd never let me too near him while he was laying down before, so I was prepared to abort the approach. But he just relaxed. I only had one horse before who let me be around her while she was down (well, if you don't count the mare who was 36 years old and dying and couldn't get up), my first pony who taught me so much and was so tolerant of my youth. And was a bit aged herself. Duke has been pretty tolerant too, but way more independent. Still, almost before I knew it I was scritching his blaze, his ears, his withers with one hand, still sipping coffee with the other. It was a total gift of a moment, the sun warming the both of us to our bones.

Then we went to town, all six went in at the post office, had a nice lunch, even brought some new aquarium fish home us.