These, too, were named

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I tend to name all animals that I come in contact with. My Dad did, too. He managed to also eat some of those named animals. I guess he was content that he had provided a good life for the animals before they were released. There was Lisa. She was a Guernsey cow. For those who don't know the old milk cow breeds, she was a large orange and white gal. She was elderly. Dad bought her from the elderly butcher, Jones. Dad hid her behind the barn because she was so boney. He'd call her name and she would trot over to be milked. Somebody had taught her to walk with a halter. And there was the soft Jersey steer. I named him Teddy Roosevelt. Not sure why. He easily learned to wear a halter and walk on a rope- guess I was teaching animals even when I was a kid. He became supper roasts. And there was Shorty, a Hereford- red and white beef bull. He almost changed my history and probably moved my upper spine a little. He also became meat but that is another post. We had Billy boar pig- he liked his head scratched. He weighed over 600 pounds and none of it fat. Dad believed in feeding the pigs grain, not slops. Billy was a clean animal. Susy was the sow. She delivered a bunch of piglets in a snow storm. Us kids worried that the pigs would die so they spent a night or two on the back porch. We also had a horse named Mantigo. He was my buddy when I was a teen. Dad also bought ponies or borrowed ponies from a friend who raised mink. One black and white Welch cross mare we named Chiquita. There was also a Shetland named Poncho that us rascals harrassed and he got back at us, scraping us off by running under a low loafing shed roof. Being horses they were protected except maybe the smaller Poncho might have become mink food. I don't know that to be true and don't want to know. Last animal but this one wasn't a farm critter- Charlie the racoon. One of my brothers had him for a pet for a while. At that time we lived in Saint Paul, Minnesota.