The H-Word

A few horse stories.

We had a black mare when I was a kid. I got to ride her to the mailbox, which was about a mile away. The first time I wasn't very prepared. I had my hands full of mail and she decided she needed to gallop back home. Well.... Mom made a sack (maybe it was a flour sack) with ties on it so I could put the mail inside and tie it to the saddle horn. That worked. Did you know that most horses walk slowly away from home and then want to run back home? At least one I know of anyway.

We had a gray horse named Smokey. He was such a good horse and gentle. We pastured him out at a friend's farm. This family consisted of three older boys. Well, when my sister and I went out some time later to ride, he had become a bucking bronco. Mom and Dad figured the boys had been spurring him and making him buck. We had to sell him because he was ruined for riding.

We had another black horse who galloped like a rocking chair. Riding him bareback was so easy. He was a big horse but I loved him. I don't remember why we sold him.

My brother-in-law bought a skinny old buckskin mare at the sale yard. She was gentle but was stiff necked about being reined. I rode her out in the pasture and taught her to neck rein. One day, my BIL, still thinking she was stiff necked, got on her to move some cows. When the rein touched her neck, she turned so quickly that he was riding on her side. It was one of my most proud accomplishments. Sandy got bogged down one day in a muddy irrigation ditch up to above her knees. We pulled her out but she would not go into water again. On the way to bring in the milch cows one day, it was necessary to go down a rather steep slope, through a little creek, and up the other side. She wouldn't even go down the slope after her incident, so I tied her to some brush. I went after the cows on foot and, while I was going over to the other side, I heard a commotion. Sandy had fallen down the slope partway. I pulled on the reins until she got herself back up. I got on her and she gave me no argument! She headed right down the trail and through the water and up the other side. I think she thought she was being punished for her actions. Did this horse's brain connect her refusal to go down that trail with the roll down the hill? And then knew somehow that she needed to obey in order to avoid being punished again?