I am enjoying watching my 25 year old Jess. He gets so excited about his feed and talks to me constantly while I'm getting it for him and still prances up to the feeder. He looks pretty good for his age and some of the things that have happened to him in life. When I took him to the Vet for his spring shots and teeth floating they were SO excited to have a healthy horse come in. They were having an intern shadow the vet and for once she got to see 'Normal'. All of them at the clinic could not believe that he is now 25, I say all of them but of course the vets who have been there a long time know my Jess well. He still stands with the 'look of eagles' and is just now beginning to show some signs of age in his appearance and of course his teeth. Now I live in the heart of quarter horse country so my Morgan with his naturally high head carriage and liveliness made the intern think he was a youngster. I had a good chuckle as he is only now beginning to slow down a little. He is the one that on our first trail rides never let down and relaxed, and I remember one in particular where he bucked for about the first 5 miles. Nothing serious but 5 miles of crow hopping up and down the Ozark mountains does get tiring. He did it because he thought the little gray he saw ahead of him was his pasture mate who was being ridden by a teenage boy that every time we even started to get close too would take off from us again. Finally I got close enough to ask him to please stop so my horse could see that it was Not his favorite mare and the boy took pity on me and waited. Now Jess really got excited and leaped, pranced, crow hopped and bounced me all over till he got close to the boys horse. Never have I had a horse just totally deflate like Jess did then. You see not only was it not his pasture mate, his favorite mare, it was a gelding! After that ride Jess behaved from then on when we went out on the trail. Occasionally he would give me a pretty good capriolle when he felt especially fine out in the hunt field but for the most part I think he couldn't stand the idea of embarrassing himself again over the identity of the other horses.