Our Big Guy–where’s my carrot?

Dollar “The Scholar” is our Big Guy, a Woolly Bear in winter, and sometimes goes by less pleasant names…but we can’t help but love him.  He’s always looked out for us; protecting us when riding or on the ground, so returning the favor is the least we can do for him.

This year, he’ll be 24 years old.  He doesn’t look his age, which is good, but turning 24 is also scary (so we won’t go any further on that topic).

He’s been retired for a number of years because of his legs, but some days you’d never know it the way he runs around and plays with the other geldings.  On the other days, (often after he’s been romping around) he definitely moves a bit slower, but he’s always happy to see us.For those who don’t know, he’s an appendix quarter horse and rather big at 16.2 hh, but we still call him a pony and squeeze on him.  That always makes him roles his eyes and we can tell he’s saying: “Hey, come on, the other guys are watching.”  Then he sniffs around for a carrot.

His official name is Silver Dollar, due to a silver dollar sized white spot on the left side of his withers.  When he bought him, back when he was 7, he ended up getting “The Scholar” added to his name because of all the mischief he managed to get into.  You could see it in his eyes, he was always working out the risk/reward for whatever he had planned and that’s not changed to this day.

I’ll gather a few more stories about him to tell over the coming weeks as aspects of his personality will be making their way into book 3.  I don’t write actual people into my stories, but I think I can make an exception in his case.

For any photographers out there, I took the shot back in 2010 with my Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens at f/1.8, 1/250s, and ISO 100.  The camera was a D700 and I used Capture NX to process the raw image.