The Thursday 13 That Doesn't Stop

13 Unforgettable Cayuses

1.When I was 10 I went to horse camp that summer. I was assigned to a bay pony named Sheba. She was kind of difficult and stubborn, but so was I, so we managed to get along just fine. I won my first blue ribbon ever at the camp horse show in a jumping class.

2. I took riding lessons for most of my childhood; my instructor had this horse named Kiowa, a former racehorse, who she was training in dressage. He had this weird habit of scratching his neck with a hind foot like a dog. Well, one time he did this, lost his balance and fell over backwards. On me. Luckily I got mostly out of the way.

3. In college, I rode on the equestrian team. At the stable where we took lessons under the instruction of a bodybuilding dwarf, there was this really cute palomino named Paddington. He was owned by the snottiest girl at the barn before she grew out of him and into a more expensive horse. He was one horse that I felt like I really clicked with and we competed together somewhat successfully.

4. During my 4 years on the team, we competed in shows sponsored by the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. These horse shows were “unique” (read: CRAZY) in that you would show up at whatever school was hosting the show and randomly be assigned a horse. All the horses had weird behavioral problems. At least the one’s I got. Like Revelry, who spent the entire class dancing sideways and spooking himself when he looked in the mirror that made up one side of the arena. I think I still managed to get 5th place, but probably because they felt sorry for me.

5.Another intercollegiate horse was Toby. He was a small pony. Small in the sense that being 5’7” I looked utterly ridiculous on him. He was also impossibly slow and it took extreme effort to get him to move out of a walk. I must have drawn that horse three times before he died of old age.

6. Also during college, I worked at this barn that offered trail rides. In exchange for guiding and cleaning stalls I got to ride. Every so often I would even make some actual money! Being young, immortal and excited to ride, I was responsible for working all the horses that had issues so that they would one day be safe enough for guests to ride. I also got to ride whatever was leftover when the safe horses were taken. Like Cinnamon, who spent the entire ride either trying to bolt, or turning her head to glare at you while trying to bite your foot, while knocking you into trees. For some reason, everyone at the barn thought I liked this horse.

7. When I worked on the ranch I had the opportunity to fall in love with a number of horses. One such beast was Sweetwater. He was a Morgan and I’m not quite sure what he was doing on a dude ranch, especially since he was a driving horse and pretty green under saddle. On the ground he was an absolute dream to work with. He would come to me from the pasture and then follow me back to the barn without a lead, his head just above my right shoulder. I could touch him anywhere while grooming and he wouldn’t object and stood rock still when being saddled. Once you got on him, it was a whole other animal. He would refuse to leave the barn, and then spend the next 50 yards trying to turn around and run back to the barn. Once safely out of sight of the barn he fuss and fuss and do idiotic things like nearly backing off cliffs and turning in circles for no apparent reason. If you could get him to settle, he was a pretty nice ride. He’d go through water, jump over logs, and race over the trails. And he NEVER. GOT. TIRED. EVER. I sure did though.

8. Homer was another ranch horse, so named because of the HMR brand on him. When you’ve got 70+ head of horses, it’s crucial to give them names you can easily remember, (Red was red, CJ had a CJ brand, and Diamond had a diamond shaped star on his head). From the moment we got him, Homer was something of a loner. The other horses never really bothered with him. So, he liked people attention. He was a real sweet horse, a pleasure to ride and work with, but he was rather accident-prone. He was always coming in with scrapes and scratches from walking into things. Once he managed to get a hoof caught on something and came in bleeding with his fetlock torn open. It was a pretty bad injury and he was out of commission for a while after that one. Poor guy.

9. Cody was another guy I’ll never forget. He was one of the horses we’d use to round up all the others from the pasture and bring them in for the day. Cody was damn good at his job too, weaving and dodging and giving the occasional “move along” nip. This one time, he and I were going after some stragglers when he stepped in a hole, stumbled and sent my flying off over his head. I landed on my butt…in front of every single person on the ranch, who had, for some reason, decided to watch me bring the horses in that morning. It took a while to live that one down. (To our credit, we got back up and got the rest of the stock in, but man, was I hurting.)

10. Red was another special ranch horse. He was completely reliable and calm and good natured. Whenever I had a bad day, I would go out to the pasture and find Red. I’d bring him a treat and he’d eat it and rest his head on my shoulder, or go on grazing quietly while I sat on his back and tried to forget whatever it was that was troubling me.

11. After I moved back to Massachusetts, I worked for a bit with a barn that showed Morgans. I didn’t know that much about saddle seat so it all seemed kind of nuts to me. Anyway, I was a groom for a couple of the big shows out here and I got to spend a lot of times with these guys. One horse in particular totally won me over, PT Son of a Gun. He was a cute little bay horse who seemed a lot more sensible than his barn mates. When you cleaned his stall, you didn’t have to worry about getting crowded into walls, or nipped at, and he always stood quietly through all manner of ridiculous grooming rituals like tail wrapping, hoof sanding, ear clipping and gingering.

12. Technically, Libby is a mule, not a horse, but she’s definitely one of the coolest things on 4 legs. I lived on this farm for a while and the owners boarded horses there, since they had about 10 acres of pasture. One of our neighbors owned this mule, Libby. I would go visit them and scratch her long ears and feed her carrots. Yep, she was stubborn, and probably too smart for her own good, which made keeping her inside her pen something of a challenge. She was really friendly and cute and a treat to ride.

13. Roxy was a pony that I was roped into working with as a favor to one of my neighbors. She had bought this pony for her precocious 6 year old daughter, but the pony wasn’t quite ready for a 6 year old, (read: she didn’t steer, or know basic commands). Somehow it leaked that I knew a little something about horses and I was quickly recruited to help out. I have to say I did have a lot of fun with this pony, even when I was tricked into showing her at a local 4-H thing and looking absolutely ridiculous on this pony. Especially when competing against normal sized horses. To our credit, we did take Reserve Champion in the Green Horse division and a shred of my dignity remained intact.

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