When Eduardo Garcia reached out to me about Ragnar, I sent him an adoption application like we always do. A couple of his references sounded familiar. When I called them, one of them said he’s a chef.
Once approved, he came out to meet Ragnar and told me what he was planning on doing with him. He was excited to be working on building an all-Mustang pack string for some really neat projects.
“Well”, I said, “I have another one you might like, but he doesn’t know much yet”. That “one” was Lieutenant, this handsome boy here, with all of 3 sessions under his belt at the time.
I don’t normally take visitors into a pen with a loose not yet gentled horse but Lieutenant is a pretty cool dude. He was very politely asking for attention through the gate, so in we went after my obligatory safety talk.
I mostly stood back and left them to it. I’m not sure who adopted whom that day but it’s since been decided that Lieutenant will join Ragnar when he’s ready.
Both are Forever Branded horses and we’re grateful for the program and what it does to help set wild horses and their sometimes equally feral humans up for success.
At some point during his time here I asked Eduardo “So how does one become a chef?” (I’m so far removed from that world, it’s not even funny. Think microwaved scrambled eggs kind of far removed.)
“You make care the number one ingredient.” was his answer. That really stuck with me when I realized it can be applied to literally everything in life.
These pictures illustrate that attitude beautifully. There’s a saying that other beings don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. There just might be some truth to that.
If you’re sad that you didn’t get a chance to adopt Lieutenant, I hope you can find peace in knowing that he’s going to be loved and cherished in a job and environment that suits him well, and that Wild Horse Outreach & Advocacy has a number of wonderful wildies coming available this winter.
