Here is a picture of Magic, our mini horse. He was 27 ½
inches at the shoulders. That’s about the size of a Labrador retriever. His
breeders told me he missed the Guinness’s World Record as the smallest horse in
the world by ¾ inch.
The man in the picture had built this wagon for his dog to
pull. When my mom saw it in his front yard, she knocked on the door and told
him her daughter had a horse that could pull it. He couldn’t believe it until he brought the
wagon out to the house. We bought the wagon on the spot. When we had birthday parties at the zoo,
Magic would give very small children a ride.
I wish I had a better photo, but all I have is this one. It
is PhotoShopped from an old Polaroid print.
My husband Joe, drove to Pennsylvania to bring him home. Magic rode
in the back of our station wagon. Joe said he sure did get funny looks with a
horse in the back of the car!
You should have seen the look on our farrier’s (blacksmith)
face the first time he came out to show me how to trim Magic’s hooves. He was
so short we had to build a ramp so he could walk up onto our dog grooming table
to get his hooves trimmed. Otherwise, we had to sit on the ground, and that was
too awkward. From the ground to his belly, Magic’s little legs were only about
six inches long. His hooves were about the size of the palm of my hand.
Magic was very funny. He loved food. About the only time he
would gallop was when he thought he might get something to eat. Magic had free run of our compound. We had to
fence off all the feeding stations to keep him from over eating. If someone accidently left a gate open, he
would gallop for it to get to the food. It didn’t matter chicken food was just
as good has horse food.
If I saw him, I would yell, “Magic! No! No! No!” and run as hard as I could to
try to beat him to the gate. Sometimes I would win, but sometimes he would win.
If he got there first, he would gobble the chicken feed as fast as possible
before I could pull him away.
