Towards the end of that fabulous day in the English countryside with our cousin Dot, where I had shared an early morning walk with my daughter, we had visited deceased relatives, and a weird house built in the freekin’ 1300’s, we went out to dinner with a few other relatives of the non-deceased variety.

During this lovely meal, one of my distant kin asked me what else I really wanted to see during our time in Great Britain. Hey, you know me. I am all about the babies, dogs and horses. I had met dogs and babies.. but no horses…

Well, the relatives all tried their best to figure out where I could met a proper English horse, and they all figured the best chance, without driving for miles and miles, would be out in the pasture lands located conveniently on the other side of a popular ice cream place. This allowed me to sweet talk my wife into letting me wander off to meet a horse while they all took care of their dessert needs.

I strolled down a hill and over a bridge above a canal. See that canal boat up there? Look to the left, between those two big trees, and past those white flowers… which turned out to be stinging nettles, by the way… and you will see a little field behind a fence. That is where I would meet my new little friend… and a bunch of those stinging nettles… after I hiked way the hell past this point…

And past a bunch of sheep… one of whom, a baby, had crawled under the fence and me and a nice English couple had to herd him back to his mommy…

And then I looked back… and hey… that looks like a horse… right back where I was ten minutes ago… but I was on an adventure now and was sure I could find a whole herd of horses to meet…

But after climbing a fence or two… I mean, not trespassing, there were these steps built over the fences for people… but then again, maybe I was because who knows how that works in the United Kingdom… But I was suddenly in an open field with a bunch of cows… and not a horse in sight…

So I went all the way back, over the fences, down the hill, over that bridge, along the canal…

And met this little guy… and what is more English than a Shetland pony? (Okay, technically, the Shetland islands are part of Scotland, but I am Scottish Lord after all)… so…