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Sometime after Sissy was in foal to Art we moved to Vermont. We stabled some of our horses including Sissy at the home of Malcolm Calder of Randolph Center. He lived about a mile up the road from Clara Hendin. He had a long driveway going into the woods and his barn and house were in a clear space with another behind the barn.

In the spring of 1981 Winloc Sir Arthur saw his first light. We think he was born around 4 am. The following day he greeted anyone who came along at his stall door as if he had been doing this for some time. I had to sneak in to take his first picture when he was lying down. We put a halter on him and let he and mum have the run of Malcolm’s front yard. It became apparent by the third day he would soon need an enclosure for he was often exploring the woods on his own and we did not want him to join the wild animals. His early awareness and independence was remarkable and he seemed born ready to be on his own.

There was little we could accomplish for fencing on the rocky ground behind the barn, but we at last managed some posts and elec. wire with cloth strips for ‘barriers’ to let the horses know better where the wire was. Arthur was about a week or two old when we erected this fence and after some chaperoning for a few days we left them on their own. We were in the barn, choring, something must have alerted us because we went to have a look and Arthur was tangled up in the wire and had apparently been so for a bout a minute. I ran back to the barn and pulled the plug on the fencer, worrying all the way back to the pasture. He was shook but ok and stuck with his mother for the next 2 or three days, before becoming his former package of precocity again and feeling up to his old tricks, which he learned aplenty and quickly through the months and years.

Arthur would love to go into Malcolm’s garage and root around in boxes and baskets. He would get into his laundry basket and carry off his shirts on more than one occasion, lose it somewhere and come back and get another from the basket. Once we took Sissy out to give her some exercise without bringing Arthur. His front feet were up on top of his dutch door before we could get her out of the barn. Such a look on his face.

Malcolm used to call him carrot for the color of his foal coat, which he lost completely by that October.

The following year we moved to E. Bethel which was about 2 miles from where the horses were kept on road to Randolph Center. We lived on Rt. 14. Justin was said to pull logs down to a mill on that road just a few miles from where we lived. and about 19 miles north of us lived Green Mountain Morgan for a little time. Almost any breeder in Vermont today can claim to have lived near some ancient Morgan.

We built Arthur a stall that had a removable front wall on the outside of the barn with a door that closed over the wall- we could lift the boards out of grooves on either side of his door. One day after visiting Mant and Lyle Horton in Hartland, we came home to find Arthur secure in his paddock behind the barn where we had not left him, then discovering his liftable boards had been lifted out of place and were in the stall behind. A neighbor had kindly taken him to the paddock.

At 15 months he let himself out of his stall dutch door by picking the latch, we thought we had left the latch undone accidentally. Very soon he did it again, exited the barn, went round the barn came out into the road and was struck by a car.

We came close to losing him. He lost a softball size piece of muscle in his right flank, injured his knees and wound up with a temperature of 105 degrees. Arthur went down and would not get up. Diane rounded up the neighbors and the Vet., Will Barry, with Clara, Pete and others to help Arthur was up again to stay. 6 months later he was completely healed except for the permanent knee damage. scars and a lump on his loin. His pranks however were not finished.

We took him for many a walk to get him used to traffic and surroundings while healing and after. Once a neighbor boy went with us and carrying his plastic sled, Arthur thought it was his and it became a tug of war between Randy and Arthur, on another walk he found someone’s old scarf and had a time with that.

One day in his stall, Diane taught him to shake his head up and down to say yes, and to lift his right front leg to ‘shake hands’ in 5 minutes time! After that we had him perform for anyone who came to the house. We seldom ate anything on the porch after this, his head would go up and down until he got something.

After a while it stopped surprising us at what snack he would eat, apple sauce from a spoon, Jell-O or cereal, cookies, bread etc. He drank orange juice water or soda from a cup. One time Susan McDaniels bought him doughnut holes for him when she came to a club meeting at our house. You couldn’t rattle the cookie jar in the house or there would be a pounding on his back door, commanding his people to bring him one. Spoiled, nah. He loved to lick the dasher when i made ice cream, sometimes he would share with Diane.

Occasionally we put him in the mare pasture where he struck up a playful relationship with the neighbors dog down at the far end of the pasture. The Lab would pull Arthur’s tail and Arthur would take his turn and circle after the dog. This went on for a week or two and the dog was tied one day to his house or a tree. Arthur wanted to play and the dog could not come over so Arthur took down the fence boards and went to visit the dog. The lady found a rope and tied him to her porch railing and came over and got us. There were a few other fences he dismantled or somehow willed himself through over the years.

(end of part one! Part two will come next Friday – stay tuned!)