Lochie having a snack on the grass. PHOTO/KAREN COLTMAN
KAREN COLTMAN
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“You know what? I’m done, done, done. Yeah, I’m gonna take my horse to the old town road, I’m gonna ride ‘til I can’t no more.”
As the now popular song goes, this is what Steve MacDonald did on Thursday after being annoyed at how much he had paid the day before for his vehicle’s road user charges on top of the standard taxes he pays. He said he spent so much on RUCs that he should go by horse as much as practical.
“I can take my horse out on the road as I like and I intend to more often,” MacDonald said.
He rode his six-year-old Clydesdale, Lochie on Chapel St on Thursday.
Lochie’s shoes made the hardly ever heard ‘clip-clop’ sound on the road and footpath as roaring trucks and car tyres whizzed past.
“You are supposed to give way to a horse, and Lochie is a great horse that doesn’t startle at anything really. I broke him in young at Castlepoint Beach in the surf,” MacDonald said.
“If he bucked, he soon learnt it was unstable to do so, and if I came off, I didn’t get hurt. The trust between us quickly developed.
“I think it is good for children to see animals that work well with humans and to see that interaction in daily life.”
MacDonald was raised around pigs, chickens, horses, cows, and “you name it”.
After running errands, Glenduan Louchinbar [bred by Phil Amberger] had a hose-down and a drink at the Chapel St BP station and then walked up Chapel St and headed down Cole St towards his home in Upper Plain.
But as a pre-Chrismas treat, Lochie took time to eat the flowering clover outside the Times-Age building.
