Subject: Thought the PONY was making progress, but...
From: Cynthia Chovich
Looks like the pony might still need some help getting there.
My wife is helping with a carnival at the dual immersion academy (near riverside) and needs to transport a pony there.
The carnival starts at about 4:30 pm and ends at about 8 pm.
I don't know how to transport a pony, nor do I have a trailer to do so.
Does anyone have a trailer and some expertise than can lend a hand?
Much appreciated,
Warren
Is this one of those SAT questions?
“A horse leaves the carnival at 4:30 p.m. traveling at 12 miles per hour. Two hours later, a truck pulling a trailer leaves the stable 10 miles away, heading for the horse. At what time do they meet?”
OK, lemme draw a diagram of the situation....
Mark
Okay, I'm a former math instructor and to answer this question we need to know the speed of the trailer.
After I know this, I can answer your question.
Jim
actually don't we also need to know the direction the horse is moving? towards the stables or away from them?
ok, but who is moving the horse?
Thea Chase
How big it the pony? Is it a Shetland or a regular pony?
Okay all, being a rancher's wife,there are several variables here.
If the horse's ears are back, and IF they guy with the truck and trailer actually remembered gas for the vehicle and air in the trailer tires:
GOOD LUCK FIGURING ANYTHING OUT !
If it is a Shetland pony, just put it in the backseat of the car and your problem is solved!
But most importantly where is the horse's a## in all of this? Warren, right now all fingers point at you since you are getting absolutely no worthwhile help from all of this.
Rick Ott
Okay now. What are they serving over there on main campus. Is someone spiking to cappuccino or something and how do we get it on Bishop?
My apologies to everyone.
My gun went off when I was trying to delete all these emails.
The pony is alive, but won't be able to make the party!
Dave Fleming
The trailer that I was going to volunteer has a flat tire, so I am glad that it won't be needed
Bernadine Sherman
People,
Thanks for providing me with chuckles all morning long. As I sit at home, on my laptop, ok: underneath it, on sick leave, battling this stupid cancer, I cannot help but be amused. Rick, Warren may not get any help from this, but I DO! As they say, laughter is the best medicine. Thanks for providing it, you good people.
Best,
Gabriele
Don't take him to the glue factory yet!!!
He is making us healthy!
Excerpt:
In 2006 researchers investigating the interaction between the brain, behavior, and the immune system found that simply anticipating a mirthful laughter experience boosted health-protecting hormones. Now, two years later, the same researchers have found that the anticipation of a positive humorous laughter experience also reduces potentially detrimental stress hormones. According to Dr. Lee Berk, the study team's lead researcher of Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA, “Our findings lead us to believe that by seeking out positive experiences that make us laugh we can do a lot with our physiology to stay well.”
Rest here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080407114617.htm
Cathy Hartt
Looks like the pony might still need some help getting there.
What does constant stress do to one's health?
I think I can safely say that all of us appreciate the insight that Pat Schutz (the quiet one with the blue jacket) and his brother have provided towards a potential solution.
:)
Ben
This is how they solved it in my old hometown....if it's a little pony!
I took these pics in traffic, a couple of years ago.
Hey, Warren, I bet you thought this was going to be a simple question, didn't you?
Warren, you might contact Kevin Bates here at the college. He's the advisor for the Rodeo Club.....he may have a solution for you!!
I shared the conversation on campus about the pony with Rose.
She said they might just try mud wrestling instead.
I have archived the dialog so far, and plan to use it as an illustration of social networking (gone awry :o)
Some updates:
Preston Ellis has offered to help as a handler, but isn't certain he can get a trailer.
Brigetta Wilson has offered up a 4-horse trailer and truck.
Does anyone have a smaller horse trailer? My jeep cherokee has a hitch and tow package (and I'm not afraid to use it). It just seems like an overkill to put one little pony in a 4-horse trailer.
In case you have been in a coma for the last two days: I need the trailer on April 25th from about 4pm until about 8pm.
Thanks to everyone for making this a lot more fun....
Warren
Actually, Teacher Ed could use the pony to help us move.
Madge
Warren,
Just a couple of (possibly helpful!) thoughts:
Have you heard from Tim and Paula Casey? They haul their llamas around and have a trailer you might be able to use. I can't remember what size it is, though. (Paula is my cousin).
I have a pickup and three-horse trailer. The big problem is logistics--I live near Hotchkiss so it's not so easy to bring it down and then stay through late in the evening. If you really get in a bind perhaps we can work something out.
Good luck!
--Dan
Good reply, Warren :-). good luck on the smaller horse trailer
Jim
Okay, Warren. (BTW, thanks for unwittingly providing a forum for some comic relief, and for being such a good sport)
I have an older 2 horse trailer without the divider that should fit your needs. You may borrow it if you like. It's a bumper-pull style so your Jeep should work if it has a receiver hitch and a 2" ball.
If it appears that my schedule allows me to personally do the transporting, I'll be glad to do it. Let me know.
Pat
Warren,
After seeing the life this thread took on, I am sorry I contacted you “out of thread.”
I guess my supervisor will be anticipating my taking a couple hours on Friday the 25th. I now wouldn't miss this for the world!
I have a truck and it will pull a four horse trailer as well as anything either smaller or larger. Now to add many more verses to this song I ask this question.
Does this pony have experience at trailer travel?
Preston
Hi Warren
I couldn't help myself.... just have to ask this..... so, in other words our 4-horse slant live-in quarters horse trailer that I use for traveling and barrelracing, is a bit overkill? Ha!Ha! I just couldn't resist.
Good luck finding something that will work. I know my dad, when I was little, would transport my pony in the bed of the truck with a campershell on it. We have other friends, who have a mini, and transport in their vehicle, something like your cherokee.
Good luck my friend!!!
Have a great weekend!
Terri
So finally the end of the story. It's the long version since, well, everything that led up to this kind of spells that kind of tale out....
I got three offers of a trailer. One turned out to be in poor condition, another quite large, and then there was Pat Schutz's, who lives out in Palisade (a few miles from where I lived as a teenager, ironically enough).
Wednesday night (two days before I had to move the pony) I drove out to pick up the trailer with my Jeep Cherokee, my son (bribed with a Chalupa from Taco Bell), and a handful of trailer electrical adapters “just in case.” I got within a few blocks of his house before getting lost (second road on the left) and knocked on the wrong person's door (although they had a promising looking horse trailer, in fact two, right outside). I quickly discovered it was not Pat's house. I thought about just asking about borrowing one of her trailers, but decided it would be rude to stand Pat up that way, and so really did have to find his place without the note I was sure I didn't need when I left the house. Luckily, Pat is notorious enough in the neighborhood that I was told where to go.
A few roads on the left later, we pulled into Pat's driveway. I had called in saying we would be trying to pick up the trailer earlier & didn't get any response. I took this to mean they weren't in or didn't want to be disturbed, which meant I wasn't going to knock, but rather quietly take the trailer off their hands. Besides, I don't think stealing a horse trailer is a hangin' offense.
Bryce hopped out to line up the ball. Curiously, Bryce has taken to not wearing shoes to school (but wears socks), which is a teenage rebellion I am happy to accommodate considering the alternatives. On days like this, however, it is something of a handicap. Lucky for him, Pat's trailer was parked in gravel, rather than a dirt lot full of horse manure.
We weren't really fairing that well, and then Pat pulled up. He gave a hand and things got worse pretty quickly. Within a few minutes we had the thing hitched, safety chained, and wired up. But then a light check quickly showed, well, nothing but darkness.
We looked over the harness and found nothing wrong, then traded in my Jeep for Pat's truck. He had a spiderman-meets-the-hunchback kind of wiring harness adapter that worked fine on his truck, but had nothing to do with connecting to my Jeep. So I asked the obvious: would he mind trading my Jeep for his truck for a few days while all this “pony” stuff clears up.
Nothing doing. It turns out Pat's truck has this weird idle problem that only he is a master of (his wife won't even drive it). I leave this part in the story only to warn you that, if you see Pat driving up behind you in his truck, be at least a little scared. Remember that the safest thing is to have your head firmly against the headrest when he rear-ends you.
So there we were. Trailer hitched up, in the dark, with no lights. So home we went, trailerless and not really any wiser.
A little web searching revealed there are two “standard” ways to hook up the wiring harness from a 7 connector (like a Jeep Cherokee) to a 6 connector (like Pat's trailer). I quickly rewired my adapter at my workbench thinking about a saying in computer science: standards are great, everyone should have theirs.
Now I was ready. I drove back Thursday afternoon and discovered my web discovery didn't help at all---the lights were just as dead as before (after thinking about the Thing Called An Adapter Pat used to hook up to his truck this really didn't surprise me). But now it was daytime and I had had enough, the trailer was going to the Pony's house; Blanca's.
Having remembered my lesson about Pat's house, I had the directions to Blanca's house and her phone number. I got just about as close as to Pat's house before getting lost anyway. (and Blanca was not answering her phone---what is this about the 21st century and people having cell phones they don't actually use?) I had to talk to several people (lucky my Spanish isn't uselessly bad), before discovering that Montana does a bait-n-switch about two blocks before it ends: a new street continues forward while Montana takes a quick right as if it was designed to throw you off it's trail.
I dropped off Pat's trailer, happy that this part of the story was done.
The next day, Friday - day of the carnival in which said pony would be part of the entertainment - I called Preston Ellis, who offered up his service as a “handler” during the actual transportation.
Two important questions Preston wanted to know was “is it a Shetland?” and “had he been ridden before?” Now I don't know a Shetland from a Dachshund, so I asked Blanca and her answers were “No (not a Shetland)” and “Yes (had been ridden).” These answers will matter in a minute. The Shetland question seemed particularly important, and I don't exactly remember what Preston said about it, but do recall it had the word “hell” in it.
At about 3 I showed up at Blanca's house and got the trailer back on the Jeep. Preston showed up a few minutes later on his motorcycle, and he went over assess what was clearly (to him) a Shetland pony.
About twenty minutes, a broken fence, a broken gate, a large protective mare and her colt, and a dozen goats just hangin' around to watch the excitement later, we had the pony in the trailer. At this point I got a call from my wife, Rose, asking what was going on and what was taking so long.
“All is fine, we're just getting ready to move him.”
It's a two mile drive, maybe less, form Blanca's house to the Riverside/DIA school where the carnival was, and I took it nice and slow with Preston watching my back on his bike. About ten minutes later we were taking him to his makeshift pen next to the basketball hoops.
The “makeshift” part of the pen was traffic barrels with orange safety tape tied between them. This tape was very bright and fluttered in the (breezy) breeze. The school also has 340 running right next to the playground, creating a lot of traffic noise that our pony wasn't accustomed to. Blanca, who was there also pointed out that he had been ridden, but only by her son and they actually only had him for the past few months.
We tried to settle him down for about twenty more minutes before the call was made to take him back home. I had suggested they just up the price and call it a “bronco” ride but cooler heads in the end won out.
The trip back to Blanca's was uneventful, and the pony was happy to be back in his pen.
However the trailer still had a little pony in it. In the horse-wise words of Preston, “You've got to understand, when you move a horse in a trailer, they just shit. It just always works out that way.”
I wasn't going to drop off the trailer at Pat's without cleaning it, and the hose at Blanca's was run by an irrigation pump we didn't know how to turn on, so I just shoveled out the big stuff and planned to wash it at the nearby car wash on Monument road. I thanked Preston and headed out to clean the trailer, then return it to Pat's house.
I got to the car wash and pulled it into one of the empty bays for a quick rinse, and checked my wallet to discover I had spent my last bills on that Chalupa my son had a few days before. I dug around the console for loose change (I needed one dollar in quarters), and found three quarters and about six dimes.
Recalling that this car wash was equipped with a credit card reader, I happily swiped my card for a $1 wash.... Only to discover the card reader was broken.
So I waited until some driver was just pulling in for a wash and offered to trade three dimes for one quarter. He happily passed over the quarter (for free! Where is the capitalist backbone of this country?) and I got to wash the last of the pony out of Pat's trailer.
After returning the trailer to Pat's, I stopped by the Palisade brew pub to enjoy a beer and a brat before heading back for the end of the carnival, where Rose and her student teacher were mud wrestling the kids....
[ well, actually arm wrestling ]
In the end of the pony tale, only the pony got a ride, and the only entertainment was for the adults.
Enjoy the summer.
Warren
Thank you for the great entertainment!
You should write a book as it would be sure to win an award, or at least submit your story to Jeff Foxworthy.
Warren: I haven't laughed this hard for a long time. Thanks for sharing the pony tale.
Angela
Thanks for keeping us all in the loop. Wonderful story as well as the telling of it.
Next time, kindly ask your wife to volunteer to do something more within your areas of expertise and equipment or conveniently be out of town.
That's how my husband and I work it out !!!
Actually, he simply says NO.
I was wondering how things worked out.
Shetlands are the PITTS !!!
Thank you for all of the fun you created !
HAVE A GREAT SUMMER !
Becky
Warren, thanks for the great story. I can now face my next final with a smile on my face.
Have a great summer.
Heather
Sounds like you are a wiser person for the adventure.
At least it was a good effort on your part, and I am glad to hear how it all finished up.
Warren, thank you for that truly marvelous tale (tail?) to make our finals week a lot more fun! I was also glad to find that other parents of high schoolers have decided to ignore certain little quirks and that my daughter's quirks are no worse than your son's. She also has a shoe problem. And a coat problem. And a ... well, never mind.
:^)
MaryAnne
Your pony saga has been the highlight of the end of my semester!
In between the grading and the organizing, not to mention my student's version of Whinefest: 2008, it has been a joy to be able to read and re-read some of the pony comments.
Thanks for a hysterical recap of the final chapter!
Hi Warren
What a story!
The only thing that worries me (or I should say, worries me the most) is that you wrote this in the future (see your time record below)...
Deb Kennard
(and mom of DIA student)
Heh-heh.
I like it, Warren.
Sometimes life can be stranger than fiction, eh?
Fabulous story Warren.
Thanks for the entertainment.
I had heard from DIA parents that there was no pony, so I had been wondering what happened.
A thoroughly delightful story. thanks for the laughs during finals week.
Sorry I couldn't have been of more help, but it sounds as if you had enough help to keep the story interesting.
Great story! Thanks for the smile.