More on the Table of Contents

4. A Horse Named Tubby

5. The Look of Eagles

6. Mud

Chapter 4 seems like a combination of "The Man from Snowy..." & a "Godfather" sequel of some kind. The only thing you need to know is that the horse learned how to read The New York Times through the bathroom window.

Oh. The title isn't a fat-horse slur. Tubby was height/weight proportional for a young unemployed horse.

Kid Shows Interest in Veterinary Medicine

I did know that when it came to mice violating the cornmeal law, mother preferred to dish out death with a glue trap. Which meant that the only possible escape was to leave a leg behind. I got pretty good at mouse orthopedics. A couple actually healed up enough to be released, only to show up missing two legs.

Mom moved on to neck snappers. I had to close my clinic.

The Book is Full of Questionable Human Activity!

Chapter 22 is called 'Paralytic Loading Disease and Other Afflictions.' This chapter focuses on how you find really dumb volunteers to risk their lives trying to get a horse on the wrong bus. The horse really should be pointing the other way. Or not.

In a later chapter I'll explain how to import banned farm chemicals from Central America and how you dispose of a manure pile without the fire department finding out.

There's a kid growing up with obvious problems!

-The counselor told me that my mother was probably deflecting some leftover hostility involving two divorces, three car accidents and the appearance of my step-brother. At least that's what the counselor thought. I figured she was working on her doctorate or something since I had no idea what she was talking about. I still nodded politely at the end of every sentence. I wanted to avoid the next step, which involved a piece of lumber and the Vice-principal. Nodding politely didn't work in his office.


-I had to suddenly switch to Marlboros. Used to be Lucky Strikes. Stole them from the 'It' that kept catching the house on fire...
...I didn't smoke because of peer pressure. That was because I was the peer pressure. Funny how you can go from social outcast to idol with the addition of one bad habit.

Nancy Arbuckle's Hair?

"Good. Very observant. Actually, she did have a small fire in her hair. Seemed the eighth-grade class at Morgan Junior High set her head on fire up on Hiway 99...I got thirty pages of paperwork, workmen's comp crap...you have to take over her route."

"Oh."

Probably explains why she wouldn't let go of the fire extinguisher.

Table of Contents

1. Torn Faith

2. Under the Spreading...Tarpaulin

3. Nancy Arbuckle's Hair

Maybe I should explain what happened to Ms. Arbuckle's hair. Seems she drove a school bus. Eighth-graders as I recall.

"It's like this," he began. "You know Nancy Arbuckle?"

"Yeah. Well sort of, I mean not really. Her hair looks funny, like it caught on fire or something." I was fishing.

More on this mystery later.

[image: Ron & Joe.com]

Coming in April 2011!

About the Book:


Mares, Foals & Ferraris is a hilarious and convoluted tale of one man's quest to quit driving a school bus and become some sort of farmer. Like most quests, this one went a little siderways. Instead of turnips, he got racehorses. But underneath this story is another: a child trying to understand a violent world, a young adult trapped between a reluctant acceptance of what is and that wonderous free flight born of the what if. And finally, the insatiable curiosity of an old writer -- born in the bright dawn of Camelot, yet destined to wander the endless catacombs that shelter the what was.

Two puzzling questions the book will finally answer: Why children run away to live with animals? And on the more capricious side of life's mysteries, why people breed racehorses when they could just as easily own a Ferrari? Maybe two.

About the Author: A. Allan Juell has been writing about horses and the...well, those folks that tend to hang around with large, hairy mammals for roughly thirty years. His work appeared in periodicals such as The Washington Thoroughbred, EQUUS, The Chronicle of the Horse, Western Horseman, Thoroughbred Times, Anvil Magazine and many others. He picked up a few obscure literary awards along the way, as well as copious amounts of 'enlightened' criticism.

He spent twenty-five years as a farrier and farm manager and about fifteen years as an intinerant journalist, wandering most of the world's habitable continents and questionable bars. He holds a degree in history (international affairs) and sometimes attempts to further confuse the world's problems at Demokracy.com. He lives in North America...sometimes.

Fiction, available through the normal outlets in April 2011. Excerts here and at Horsetrionics.com around February.