The Yellar Outlaw

I had asked my buddy to write this story and haven’t seen anything yet, so…now he is at the mercy of my faulty memory and artistic license!  Guy has been mentioned in previous stories, nothing bad mind you….just some funny stuff!

As I’ve said in stories before, one of the requirements of where we went to college was to ride two year olds….sometimes an older horse snuck in, but generally it was only two year olds.  There were some folks who brought in a two year old dun mare and a three year old yellar mare.  Now the little dun mare (which I rode) did just fine, never really had any problems with her.  That yellar mare (yeah, that’s right we named her Yellar Mare, no one said we were original when it came to naming horses) was another story; she wasn’t really broncy, just a little twitchy….ok, a lot twitchy!

When Guy first started her, she did real well until it came time to take the saddle off.  Every time he touched the back cinch, she broke in two.  Pitching for all she was worth!  I happened to be close by so he asked me to undo the cinch while he held her head.  This turned into a practice of desensitization, I would touch the back cinch….Guy would hang on for all he was worth, while she pitched in a circle around him.  This went on for hours (well maybe 30-40 minutes) before she was calm/tired enough to be able to pull the saddle off.  Of course, this led to thoughts and conversations of how hard she was going to buck on that second saddling and if Guy was going to just jump on and go; or spend a little time to make it right for the mare.

Of course the choice was to just jump on and go!  We believed you could ask for help with the saddling, but you had to fork your own broncs….unless there was a chance for us to ride one (Proof read people, always make a point to proof read, this should say ride one for the young ladies or maybe better said would be ride one of the young ladies colts...cause that really sounded bad!) of the young ladies, or inexperienced riders, bucking colts.  There was a circle of about 5 of us that were made of rubber and dumb enough to try and ride everything that bucked even a little bit.  Anytime a colt started bucking, we raced to that particular round pen and hoped whoever got bucked off wasn’t hurt, just scared enough that they would not get back on.  Then it was katy bar the door!  The race was on to see who could get unsaddled first, cause that meant you got to ride something broncy!  Heaven forbid you get bucked off that particular colt, because the shame and ridicule you received was pretty harsh!

Back to the yellar mare!  Next day we lined the round pen hoping that Guy would get bucked off….that’s right I finally said it!  None of us would say it then, but that was what we were hoping for!  It would have insured that time honored tradition of heckling the rider and his/her skills; it also would have led to offers to ride the colt from us, but most of us would have had to have been drug around by the horse before we would let that happen!  But, alas!  Yellar Mare got that watermelon under the saddle for about 2 minutes and then just never missed another beat!

Fast forward about a month.  We had a plowed trail we used to ride on when we had some control (in some cases, just because we were a little stupid) and Guy is loping this mare in some circles in a wide area.  She was loping along just as nice as you please like she’d done it all her life!  As the lab ended, we were all headed to the barn and someone asked, “where’s Guy?”   A couple of us headed back to where we saw him last, and there he was….loping those pretty as you please circles!   So the question begged to be asked was “why are you still loping circles?”  Guy looks up and shows us that he is holding the bit in that mare’s mouth and the headstall is hanging down by her chin.  He says, “I can’t stop or change her direction!”  Of course this was funny!  So we watched for a while, finally one of the instructors rode up and loped beside the mare until Yellar hooked onto his horse and they were able to walk her to a stop. 

Yellar turned out pretty anticlimactic as compared to her start, which leads to this thought:

We fight and pitch against what God is offering us, and sometimes even after we have accepted the gift of Christ….we are like that Yellar Mare….we let the world/church hold that snaffle bit in our mouths and won’t let ourselves be stopped or have our direction change because we are comfortable with our present situation….just loping those pretty as you please, go nowhere circles! 

We need to step out, allow Christ to hold those reins and guide us to where he wants us to go!

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:9-10