Grandma's Pony
Grandma Nedzel was born in 1895 in a small town in what was then part of the Russian Empire: Tiraspol in a region called Transnistria. When she was growing up, her family had a pony as a pet. In their backyard, they had dug an underground cooler - a room buried in the garden which was stocked with ice during the winter so that it would stay cool all summer. There was a stairway down to the underground room, where there were what amounted to ice boxes and storage racks. When Grandma was little, she taught her pony to walk down the stairs, open the cooler and get a milk bottle (with a nipple already installed) out and have a drink.
During the war with Japan in 1901, the government requisitioned horses including Grandma's pony and she never saw him again.