1. Meeting the Roan

We were driving down a back country road at sunset, it is cloudy out and it is starting to smell like it might rain outside. My mother is taking me to rescue a horse from a man who is known to mistreat his horses. The horse we are heading to rescue from this guy is a beautiful blue roan, mom says he will need alot of work to get him back up on his "feet". I'm excited to meet him and start helping him like many others we have helped, we make a living helping people and their horses with all kinds of problems.

We arrived at our destination and we got out of the truck and headed up to the house to meet with Martin. Mother knocks on the door and before to long Martin answers he looks at us and sighed " alright let's go just remember im being a nice guy in letting you take the Roan, don't expect payment for the costs on this horse" and with that he leads us to his barn opens it and led us inside. once we stepped inside the smell of rot and manure was strong. in one of the stables you could see a colt that has been dead awhile and was left. the stables look as they havnt been mucked out for ages. At the back of the barn was the roan in a stable looking rather rugged and in really bad shape. Upon looking at him you can see he is very malnourished and is in need of major weigh therapy, his legs were in sad shape with cuts all over, hooves needed trimmed badly. I look at my mother and she gives me the "look" to not make a scene and start yelling at Martin for his mistreatment of this beautiful creature.

Mother opens up the stall and I hand her the halter we brought along with us and steps towards the roan, he looks at Mother with wide eyes of distrust and snorts at her. she calmly stands there, sticks out her hand and waits for him. After awhile the roan steps towards her sniffs her hand, snorts again and backs up. Mother is still waiting paitently, wanting to earn his trust and go with us willingly. He steps forward again sniffs and bows his head and allows Mother to pet him. they stand like this for awhile gaining each other's trust.

Mother was able to halter the roan and led him out of the stall and we started to walk towards the barn door. Martin was standing at the entrance watching us, as we neared him he said " hope he's not a waste for you as he was for me, ungrateful horse." and walked away and left us to load him into our trailer.

We started to lead the roan to the trailer the wind started to pick up a little and it started to drizzle out, he started to freak a little and Mother just patted his neck shushing him to calm him down. once we arrive Mother told me to unlock the back and open the trailer up so she could load him. She coaxed him into the back and tied him to one of the loops ment for the lead rope to be tied to keep a horse from moving freely inside. She exited the trailer after getting the roan settled and we closed and latched the trailer. we walked around and got into our truck and Mother started the truck and put it in drive and eased the truck and trailer forward and started down the drive and back onto the road to head back to our ranch. Getting back home will take 2 hours and it is dark now and there is a storm brewing in the distance, it looks like it could be a bad one.