These are Great!
Here are the scanned versions of the old pictures. Thanks to Carol and Brenda.
This would be the horse and cutter with Vivyan's father Jack Hockridge. The horse was Dick, the dog was Shep.
And Look at that, Vivyan on her favouite horse Sifter.
A scanned and coloured photo of the whole Hockridge familly from way back. That is Vivyan on the right, then Clarence, Verlet and Carman. Their parents Jack and Mary are in front.
The horse on the cutter with my dad was Dick and the dog was my old faithful Shep. My first memory is of my Dad coming home before Christmas when I was two months short of three years old with this pup peeking out of his big lumberjack shirt. My Dad got Dick from a farmer who was afraid of him and probably treated him badly. Dick remained afraid of most men but it wasn’t long before my Dad had Dick working great. He became my Dad’s main driver for the mail route.
The black horse I was riding was Sifter. My Dad bought her mother when she broke her hoof on the racetrack at Guelph. He probably paid what the pound would have given them as that was what they did with what they termed “useless” animals. She healed up fine and helped on the mail route but Dad had her bred and the result was Sifter. She was a beautiful colt and Dad kept her (thank goodness). Dad had the mother bred again and the spring I was twelve when I went to the field for the cows I saw the mother on her side with a colt half born (she wasn’t due yet or my Dad would have had her in the barn yard where he could keep an eye on her). By the time I found Dad and we got back both mother and colt were dead but we still had Sifter.
I was about thirteen when I started riding Sifter. She was still too young to hold the weight of a man on her back but she and I had great times together. She loved tossing my brother Carman and cousin Ken every time they tried to ride her but most of the time she and I got along good – at least she never managed to throw me. As you could tell by the picture it was all bareback riding as I never heard of such a thing as a saddle, but I sure had a lot of fun. Even with a huge snake (which she hated as did I) under her feet she managed to wait for me to be on her back before she took off “Hell for leather” in our usual charge down the lane. I still miss her and love my memories.
Vivyan