The photo was taken by J.J. "Jimmy" Chisholm (my grandfather), at his home Hill Acres in the Cascade foothills above Fall City, Washington. The subjects in the picture are his daughter Alice Chisholm (later Alice Saunders, my aunt) and his horse, Tommy.
This picture was from about 1926 or so, when Alice was young and wanting to play dress-up all the time. This time, she dressed up as a cowboy, which naturally required co-operation from the family's horse.
Tommy was a working horse and there was a different job for him every day of the week. He pulled the wagon to take crops and chickens to be sold, and pulled the plow in the fields, among other things. Apparently, he was smart enough to know which day it was and which job we was going to be doing. And apparently there was at least one of the jobs that he really hated. He'd hide on that morning. Occasionally he ran off to the woods. Jean Chisholm (Alice's older sister, later Jean Garten) told me that he gave that up after got a foot caught between logs while out in the woods and wasn't able to get back home by himself. He had to wait for someone to find him, get him loose and walk him home.
Tommy also carried Jack Chisholm (my father) to school in the morning all the way from the Lake Marie plateau through the dense woods down the logging roads to Fall City. Jack would turn Tommy loose at the school and Tommy would walk home to start the day's work.
I expect he's also the one who pulled the buggy when my grandmother went visiting.
