Jack's First Official Pony-ride

On Saturday, a neighbor came over with two of her grandchildren, a boy called Ben and a girl called Kinley. They like to come and play with Abby and do pony-rides. Kinley likes the horses, and Ben always enjoys Abby. Buddy is the horse we use for pony-rides, and he does the job very well. We've said in the past that Buddy has a fan club, because there are so many little children that just love Buddy. Kinley was ready to ride, and she noticed that Annie had been braiding Buddy's mane. She thought that was pretty neat, but Ben was disgusted. He thought that made Buddy look like a girl. In the meantime, I was saddling Jack so I could ride him. I did not think we'd use him for pony-rides, because Ben never wants to ride, and Kinley likes Buddy. Jack is also young and inexperienced. We had thought he might be too goofy to take on the job. Ben decided he wanted to pet Jack, so he came over and stood in front of the horse. When he reached out to touch him, Jack surprised him by sticking out his nose and ruffling Ben's hair. This was repeated several times, and then Ben said that he wanted to ride Jack. I decided that this was a good opportunity to get Ben to ride, so I said he could. Often when a child gets on a horse, they will open up and talk to you even if they were shy with you before. So we put Ben on Jack, and his grandmother took his picture. Ben commented on how tall Jack was, and I walked them around a little bit. After that, Ben got off and went to ride Buddy. Kinley got on Jack and took a longer ride. Jack took the whole business very seriously. He had a look of great concentration on his face. He did quite well, and the kids liked him. Buddy had better watch out , or he's going to lose his fan club to Jack!