Day 4 - Thursday, March 7

Thursday, we were supposed to be riding out. Instead, we found ourselves being treated as honorary members of the venerable Fannin family:

matriarch Ms Bonnie

patriarch Mr Dale

pretty Sadie

plus grown children Ray, Kim, and Jamie and grandkids Destiny, Jacob, Mackenzie and Zack.

The Fannins have spent a lifetime farming hundreds of acres all around Jena. "You name it, we've grown it." Cotton, corn, soy, etc... sometimes raising cattle as well... and all of them winning ropers or barrel racers besides. Thier home is a big old comfy ranch house with paintings by Bonnie's sister and photos of family all round. They went out of thier way to make us comfortable and help any way they could and search high and low for any available mule. (Which did NOT include Sandy, their sweet old molly!) By Thursday morning, I was looking at horses as well. Any animal that might work. I was even thinking, donkey and cart...

Thursday night I went to see Ray and Chris's son Jacob pitch in a baseball game. I love baseball, looked forward to seeing Jacob play, and Bonnie thought it would be a good way to get my mind off the upsetting events of the past 24 hours.

Yup, it was great to watch the kids play ball and joke and laugh with Ray and Chris and their friends. But the funniest part was, it turned out to be one long equine networking night! I swear Raygot every single parent in the stands on the phone calling anybody they could think of with an animal that might or might not be for sale. All not long I kept hearing snatches of cnversation: "mutter mutter MULE blah blah blah mutter mutter HORSE grumble grumble KNOWS SOMEONE mutter mutter..."

But alas, by that time pretty much everybody within 200 miles knew about my search, and the pool of possible mounts had been pretty much exhausted.