April Fools day and the wind was blowing strongly. A recipe for disaster for sure, but not today. Shunka has learned to trust me and I to trust him and today it saved us from a possible disaster.

I had taken him out into our yard to graze on the new grass. I was wearing my contact lenses with sunglasses over them because of the wind. In spite of that I got something in my right eye. I tried rubbing it away. My eye began to tear so I was sure that would wash it away. Instead it began to hurt so bad that my other eye wanted to close right along with the one that was hurting. All I could do was get to the first place I could think of to tie Shunka and run in the house and take them out. I tied him to the English walnut tree behind the house and ran in. I was in the house a couple of minutes. In that two minutes he managed to get one leg wound up in the rope and his head pulled down . He was stuck. When I came out his head was pulled down and his leg was pulled up and the rope was taunt between him and the tree.

I ran up to him as soon as I saw what he had done. I tried to loosen the rope but he had it pulled too tight. Now a lot of horses would have gone nuts and pulled and probably broken their leg but not Shunka. He relaxed as soon as I got to him. I got him to move up but had a bit of trouble getting the rope off his leg because he immediately went back to grazing. He was that sure that Mom would fix everything. I finally got him to move up enough to give me slack enough to make the loop big enough to slip down over his hoof. Then I had to get him to pay attention to me long enough to raise that hoof. He was much more interested in eating grass.  When his leg was free I turned to untie the rope from the tree. He had pulled the knot so tight I couldn't budge it. I went int he greenhouse and got a pair of hand pruners and cut the rope. Next time I think I'll just drop the rope on the ground and go do what I have to. It would be safer. And I have to get a knife I can carry with me at all times. Next time the hand pruners might not be handy.

It was a perfect spring day as far as weather. And the lilacs are blooming.

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