“Your present is in the picture,” read the homemade birthday card from my grown daughter, Elizabeth. “The pony, not the man.”
The picture was of my husband, Andrew, seated in a pony cart and driving Timbit – a small grey steed Elizabeth had bought two years previously for her riding school in Deep River, Ontario. When Elizabeth moved temporarily to the Maritimes in 1998, I helped her sell her brown pony mare, Bonnie, to a good home and her Quarter Horse mare, Baylee, to a friend of mine, but for some reason I was reluctant to advertise Timbit.
And so, at age 49, I acquired the pony I had always longed for when I was a little girl! We already had several horses on the property that I could ride, and Timbit was too small to be of much use as a mount, except for the tiniest of riders, so why had I been so reluctant to see him sold? While it might have been the look of mischief in his eyes, or the way he turned into “Fuzzy Buns” in the winter, I think the real reason is probably because Timbit is what’s known as a character – full of personality, for better or for worse.