A BLT for the horse

One afternoon I was eating a rare treat, a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich—something I had recently discovered. My old horse Chiquita, who was grazing on the grass around the front of the house, was so used to sharing snacks with me that she reached over and snatched my sandwich right out of my hand, and gobbled it up. I was stunned as I had barely taken a bite. When she hit a strip of bacon, she was surprised and began nodding her head for all she was worth, because I don’t think she’d ever experienced bacon, or any meat, before in her life. But it was salty and she liked that. See, it all began innocently enough. We used to collect day-old bread from Bordenave and Lombardi bakeries and feed it to the animals. So she thought anything that resembled a loaf of French bread was for her. She looked like Winston Churchill in the war-room with a cigar in his mouth, as she tilted her head sideways, and got a dreamy look in her eyes, whenever she ate those loaves of French bread. Her sidekick, Winky the cat, was standing on his hind legs, wanting in on the action, got a piece of bacon for his efforts.