I made a couple of preparations for my third trip to see the little filly stranded in the snow. I bought a pair of cross country ski boots and borrowed skis because the snowshoeing was ridiculously hard last time. And I brought along 2 carrots, one for each of us to feed to Thankful. It was dead easy to ski out there: the snow has a serious crust on top, so with skis you don’t even need a trail; you could just skittle along the surface. But little Thankful wouldn’t play.
All she does is run away. Where the spring flows, the snow is gone and she can run away gracefully. Where there’s snow, it’s still too deep for her to move, and she has to run away like a fish leaping through the waves. But still she runs.
Thankful isn’t afraid of the dog, but people scare the pants off her.
I’m using a camera with a telephoto lens, so you can’t tell how far away I am from this scene. But in truth, the deer and wild turkeys let me get a lot closer to them than this little horse.
Six weeks ago, Thankful looked like a bag of bones. She’s still stuck in the snow and she’s dirty from lying down in the mud, but she looks great. We left the carrots on her pile of hay
and skied off, leaving the little wild child all alone. If she could follow Suzy home, she would.
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