As I sit in my back yard under my favorite shade tree, I look south across a slight swale that leads up to a hill on my neighbor's property about 300 yards away, and suddenly a couple of horses appear. My mind wanders back to the time of my youth and some of the experiences I had with horses while growing up on the farm.

My father always had at least one horse -- some good ones and some not so good -- and I more or less grew up around horses. But the horses my dad owned were work horses, meant to earn their keep by plowing, cultivating the garden and hauling wood. They mowed the grass that dried into hay to feed them during the long winter months and helped to perform the many chores required in those days that only the services of a horse could provide.

I have had some memorable experiences working with horses, and they were not all good. I have been bitten, stomped on, kicked and pressed against the walls of the stable by horses, and I never knew what to expect when entering the stall.

They are a most unpredictable animal. Gentle and benign one second, they can change in a heartbeat, prone to bolt at the slightest provocation. They are easily frightened and can become agitated and confused at any slight variation in their routine.

I recall as a 16-year-old working one summer for a farmer who had a huge chestnut horse named "Prince," and I had been in his stall many times to harness him for some chore. One chilly and rainy day, I slipped on an old

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barn coat and stepped into his stall to harness him. He went absolutely berserk, kicking and shoving me against the wall. I was lucky to have escaped with my life as I managed to scramble from his stall. I can only assume there was something about the coat that drove him wild.

Another time, my father owned a gentle old mare named "Nelly" that was as tame as a pussycat until one day when I was holding my baby brother and moved close to her so the baby could pet her. Gentle old "Nelly" reared up and kicked me with both hind feet, knocking me to the ground and narrowly missing the baby. I was unable to walk for a couple of weeks and missed some school, but the baby and I both escaped serious injury.

At one time I could name the various parts of a horse's harness, but my memory fades as I grow old. I can remember the collar and the hames that fit over the collar and the tug straps that attached to the whiffle tree, but it's been a long time since I backed a horse into the shafts.

Horses have some peculiar traits, and often one has to resort to trickery to get them to perform as wanted. We had no running water in the old barn, and we had to lead the horses to a brook behind the barn to water them. In the winter, the slope from the edge of the brook to the water would often get quite steep, and the horses would be afraid to step down. But I soon learned that if you backed the horse down so he couldn't see where he was going, he had no compunction about it.

The horse is a strange but often enjoyable animal.

Joe Bushika of Stamford, Vt., has also noted that man is a strange but often enjoyable animal. He writes his column every week for the Transcript. Feedback is welcome.