Life Sketches by Terry Berkson

Mum’s the Word, Right Runty?

Recently, my neighbor across the road asked if I would feed and water his horses for a couple of days while he and his wife traveled out to Ohio to visit relatives. He, in turn, tends to my chickens when we go on a trip. I had taken on this chore before, so I knew how much grain and how many flakes of hay to give each horse. Ranger, a retired chestnut trotter with three white stockings, would get a full scoop of oats and two flakes of hay twice a day. The ponies would get a quarter scoop and only one flake twice a day. There was also a new addition to the animals in the barn—a spirited one-year-old black and brown short-haired mutt named Runty. I was asked not to let him out of the barn “because he likes to run and might not come back for hours.”