Regina, New Mexico
When I first arrived at Largo Canyon, there were six horses, two mules, and three donkeys. Shortly after that, two of the horses and the three donkeys went out to pasture. Today, it was time to bring them home. Jane, the person we had the barbecue with the other day, drove over bright and early, we hooked the horse trailer to her truck, and we were off.
After driving through a maze of dirt roads, Pat got out here GPS, and then brought out her computer which is connected to the internet with some cell phone device. She had five bars! She checked out Google Earth, and compared it to the GPS, and we were off again in more or less the right direction. We turned onto a narrow dirt road, and were rolling along, when all of a sudden in front of us, the road had been washed out! We had to turn the truck and trailer all the way around and go back the way we had come! Luckily, there was a place to turn around. And even more luckily, the washed out road was close to where we had just turned onto it, instead of at the end of it!
After a lot more dirt roads and a little bit of pavement, we came to the ranch. As soon as we drove in, we saw the three donkeys, but the black and white pinto mare was nowhere to be seen. There were many, many acres of pasture where the mare could be. We started driving. We hadn't gone too far when we had to turn around. As we were turning around, someone pulled in behind us. He was a livestock inspector, who was also partial owner of the ranch or the cows on the ranch or something. He said he hadn't seen the mares in a week. The pinto mare, Paisley, hung out with another mare named Lightning Bug.
We went driving around the ranch looking for the mares, and checked out a watering hole that the guy had suggested, but no mares to be found. Finally, the guy took pity on us, and said that he would take a horse and bring the mares in, and then call. So, we collected the three donkeys into the horse trailer, and were off. We stopped at a local convenience store for some junk food before the long trek home!
We went by the hunter panel of petroglyphs again, and I saw an old car that had at sometime gotten stuck in one of the many arroyos that we passed. Finally, after over an eight hour day, most of it in the backseat of a pickup, we arrived home.
There was a lot of hullaballoo when we brought the donkeys inside. Chester was the most excited . . . he was no longer at the bottom of the pecking order! First we kept the donkeys separated by themselves so they could get acclimated, and then Pat let everyone loose and everybody was happy running around and acting like equines!
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