Round Up in the Uinta Mountains

Tim always jokes that when he goes out of town, "something always happens" at the barn. There's some truth in that, and when he left town last Thursday, he repeated that to me when he asked me to take care of the horses.

Yesterday morning (still sleep deprived from the Feast) I saw that yes, indeed, something had happened - some fence was down by the water trough.

It was no biggie as it was between the lane to the trough and the nursery paddock. All gates were shut, the rest of the fence was good, and no one could get out. No round up or nighttime jaunt for me this week!  

The same could not be said for a couple of cowboys in the Uinta Mountains of Utah.

Mountain Mama Jessica and her family were hiking and spotted two riders. Like any horse lover, Jessica and the kids stopped to watch the horses.

Cambria and her friend Addy were invited to go up to Russ, the bigger of the two horses, and pet him. They were even invited to sit on him, but Addy's mom spooked him when she rolled her stroller up, and the girls were afraid to get on. (Cambria said that she liked Abby better because "she knows her.")

The family ran into the two cowboys later in the morning again, and the reason they were in the mountains that morning became clear.

They were rounding up a herd of cattle and moving them!

Give me a round up five horses in the dark with a short hike through a soybean field over herding a large herd of cattle on a sunny day through brush and boulders and across a busy highway way up in the mountains.

A strand of downed fencing seems very minor compared to that.

Nighttime Jaunt

One evening last week I was in my jammies and heading to bed when I got a call from Tim. He was driving home from Indianapolis and had just heard from a barn neighbor that the horses were loose. I told him I would go out to the barn immediately and round them up.

Craig grabbed a flashlight while I got dressed and we zoomed out to the barn as fast as we could get there. Tim called again while we were driving and said that he'd also called Travis, a mutual friend and horseman from church, and that Trav was also on the way.

The door to the new barn was open and lights were on, so we headed up there first. The neighbor had grabbed Hokey and, not knowing which pasture the horses had escaped from, had put him in the indoor arena for safety. But where were the others? Craig and I headed outside to look for them.

Tim called as we were walking out to the north pastures and said the other horses were in the pasture of another barn neighbor. That was good news! And Trav pulled up just then, more good news.

Like any good horseman, he had several halters in the truck. I had grabbed Abby's from my trunk, and the three of us all hiked over to the neighbors' farm. There the escapees were, calmly munching grass, and greeting us happily when we walked up.

Abby came right over as soon as she saw me and I was able to easily halter her. (Although I put it on inside out in the dark.) Craig gave her some scratches since I had no treats in the car.

(She looks annoyed, but really she's not.) Together the three of us led the horses back home and we put them in the south paddock. Trav then went up to the new barn and brought Hokey down to join his buddies.

I thanked both Craig and Trav for helping, and then called Tim to let him know that all were safe and back home where they belonged.

The neighbors' pasture.

The next day Tim made sure the fence was secure in the pasture they had escaped from and things are back to normal with everyone staying where they belong. 

Amy, Abby's predecessor, once had a nighttime jaunt herself. Stay 'tooned!