Happy Birthday Needles

Today is Needles' 42nd birthday! In human years that is about the equivalent of living to 126! Pretty impressive for a horse that only cost me a dollar. She has long been blind and weak but she seems to suffer no pain and still can make me smile like few others

In light of that today I am going to tell you a story about my Needles... She has been my best buddy for such a long time that she is a part of me and I don't know what my life would be like without her.
When I was 12 years old I spent every waking hour at the barn, Needles and I would do EVERYTHING together (Break my back, climb impossible mountains, eat hamburgers... Yes at that point we both did eat "Uncle Mickey's" burgers...) Well one of my all time favorite pasttimes was to sit against her hind legs and rest my feet against her front legs and read a book, that way her body would sheild me from the sun or the rain and never once did she try to move for fear I would get hurt. I would sit there for hours and hours and let the world go by. Those are memories that I will never forget and I am so grateful to this beloved beast who gave them to me! Here is the only picture of her that I have at work...