The ultimate all-terrain transport. The best friend you can have. A ton of muscle that allows you to drag it around the world.
We have four horses. Correction; we have two horses, a pony and a miniature horse. We always have to explain, the tiny thingy is not a Shetland pony, it is a local South African miniature breed horse, whereas that hulk of muscle over there, the highly trained Cowboy Showhorse (don't ask), that horse there just about three centimetres lower at the shoulder than the two other horses over there? Well, those three centimetres is the only difference between a horse and a pony. The only difference, promise, there is a specific shoulder height for a thoroughbred horse, and anything shorter is called a pony. Now you know, too. We also have two donkeys, very interesting animals, indeed. You want a free horse? well...
Horses are truly wonderful animals. One cannot imagine why they allow us to treat them the way we do. One of the cruellest things we do, is to worship them and put our hopes of future happiness in their performance as competitive machines. Racing, showing, jumping, those horses you see on TV are the cream of the crop, the One Percent. So what happens to the other 99 horses, bred at extreme cost using the best technology money can buy, but it turns out they are not fast, not pretty, not good enough? That's right! They get left to rot somewhere they won't stink up the great master's eyesight. They get left in barren fields to starve, or sold to naïve noveau riches trying to make their little princess forgive the latest missed concert, prize giving, sports victory. The cost of keeping a horse can be quite astronomical. Imagine paying board and lodging for a beast that eats ten kilograms of expensive mixed fodder and grass and medication and training and you also have to pay the salary of the guy who is having all the fun of owning your horse except for the two or three hours a week the little missus comes over to bounce around a bit.
Soon the girly discovers boys, daddy has a new secretary, mommy has a headache, and the horse starts costing money. If you are lucky, you pass it off to the next sucker, but mostly, the horse is "put to pasture". In other words, it gets left in a field to fend for itself. It may get the occasional supplement to keep it alive in case some sucker with money passes by, but often enough you can have the scrawny bag of bones for free, so long you fetch it yourself. So there, for the cost of hiring someone with a horse trailer, you too can own a horse. If you can find the other articles in this category, there should be some advise regarding feed, health and general happiness. There are also some scary bits. Horses are big animals; when things go wrong, they go wrong big!
Hee-Hah! See you on the next link.
