Tight, Scary and Uncomfortable

Right after college I worked a few months for a place called Tequila Flats.  It was a quarter horse place and the guy that owned it also boarded some horse for the kids from local college, where incidentally he went just a year ahead of me.  Nice guy, probably more money than sense, but still an alright guy.  Why he hired me, I don’t know.  But I got to work with another guy (Doug) who worked there and I respected him as a trainer.  So it was a win-win for me. 

When I started, it was right around Thanksgiving.  So several of the college boarders were going to be out of town, we had a full book as far as boarders were concerned.  But the owner, ever the guy looking to make money just couldn’t turn down one more boarder.  In fact, he told her that we (Doug and I) would be over to pick the horse up where she was currently boarding.  Ever the faithful employees, we headed over to pick this gal’s horse up.

When we drove in, I noticed a little narrow, short one horse trailer. 

 

I also noticed this big ol’ black thoroughbred gelding running in the pasture.  I should have been clued in right there, but ya know….clueless.  The girl was red faced and out of breath, again…should have been a clue.  We jumped out like the professional trainers that we were and immediately deduced that she could not catch her horse.  Being the ever prepared professional trainers, Doug had the foresight to bring a lariat.  So he immediately turned around and grabbed the rope.  Incidentally, on the ride over we had been talking about how to fore foot a horse.   Fortuitously we had happened upon a chance to put talk into action.  Doug stepped into the pen and was about to show all of his roping skills.  Somewhat anticlimactically the horse immediately stopped running when he started swinging the rope and Doug was able to walk right up to him.  We were disappointed, to say the least.

As we lead the horse up to the large two horse trailer, we chatted up the girl.  She told us that she and her parents had brought the horse all the way from California in that little one horse trailer, and didn’t even have to stop once!  Now I was pretty good at math and I quickly added up the miles between California and Lamar, Colorado; the answer was a whole bunch of miles.  I started feeling a little sorry for that big ol’ black thoroughbred.  Her trailer was tiny and I couldn’t even imagine Blackie being stuffed in there for what was probably about an 18 hour trip.  I bet he looked like a sausage that had its skin split, just bursting out everywhere.  But, lucky for him we professional trainers were there to rescue him from that gal’s ignorance.

As soon as we walked up to the trailer, Blackie balked.  I can’t say as I blame him.  We knew it was going to take some time at that point.  So for an hour we coaxed and cajoled, trying to get Big Boy into the trailer.  We used grain in a bucket, grain on the floor of the trailer and even tried waiving that rope around his behind (without actually hitting him, of course).  When the first hour was finally up, our tempers were also up.  Now we had not spoken a cross word to that horse, yet.  After all, the owner was still there watching us.  But, Blackie (Big Boy and several other names I was calling him in my head) was having no part of that trailer.  The next hour was spent being just a little more aggressive trying to get him into the trailer.  We actually gave him several soft love taps on the hind end, we linked our hands behind him and tried to push him in (that’s kind of funny now…I weighed about 150 pounds and Doug was about 175, the horse was about 1250…we thought we could push him in?).  After all of these gyrations, we were still no further along that when we started.  After the second hour, we were no longer calling him the other names in our heads.  The words were coming out of our mouths, probably to the shock of the young lady.  Tempers were flaring.  At one point, I quickly stepped back with the thought of kicking Blackie in the belly as hard as I could. 

This is a time tested method that generally all cowboys have tried at one time or another, with the same amount of success.  The process actually starts earlier and is set up by the inability of a cowboy to get an animal to act in the manner in which the cowboy wants.  It is normally about a two hour process and toward the end includes vocabulary that speaks to the heritage of the animal.  Once the vocabulary stage is reached it is not much further until the cowboy steps back quickly, you don’t want to think about the process – action is required, and lashes out with his boot and attempts to crush several ribs of the animal in question.  Now with all of the power a half starved cowboy can produce you would think there would be instant results.  There usually is, typically all you succeed in doing is breaking your toe and scaring the animal in question.

I would like to say that it was our superior horsemanship skills that loaded that horse, but probably when I stepped back so fast, it startled Blackie.  He lunged forward into the large two horse trailer and Doug quickly slammed the door shut and latched it.  We headed home discussing the heritage of the horse, the gal and any drivers on the road that drove to slow…or too fast…or just were on the road.

Needless to say, we knew when she came to pick up her horse it was going to be just as much trouble to catch and load him as it was before, but that’s another story for another time.

Now you would not think there could be a biblical lesson in this, but I believe there is.  Think about that horse not wanting to get in that trailer because he remembers that last time he was in there.  It was tight and scary and he was there for a long time.  All of these are bad experiences for a claustrophobic animal.  He wanted no part of going back in there, even though we did not mean him any harm (at first).  We only wanted what was best for him (at first).

I remember the first time the preacher asked me to cover for him on Sunday.  My first thought was that he had lost his mind, what in the world made him ask me?  But, I wanted to be obedient so I finally gave in to the call God put on me.  That Sunday I was pretty nervous.  My shirt was too tight around the collar, the songs were too short and several other things that I was uncomfortable about.  Just like that black gelding; It was tight, scary and uncomfortable for me.  Long story short, I gave what is probably in the top 10 as shortest sermons ever and was relieved that it was over.  I thought, “I’m never doing that again!’

You better watch what you say; God has a way of saying “I’ve got better plans for you than that”.  So the next time God called me to talk, I was still as nervous as before.  I stressed during the preparation before I realized that God didn’t want to hurt me; he only wanted what was best for me.  The day of the talk, there I was nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.  Remembering all of the stress I had before.  God finally grabbed ahold of me and said, “Trust Me on this”.  He told me that I had prepared and that I needed to trust that the Holy Spirit would do all of the work.  It’s funny, I spoke for about 45 minutes.  At one point I looked down and saw how far along I was; for a second or so, I panicked a little…I thought maybe I had skipped some parts.  But, the Holy Spirit grabbed me again and said, “I got this”.  I was a vessel for God; he was just using me to pour out his words.  See I was really nervous, because I remembered how nervous I was on the previous sermon, so I thought I couldn’t do this one.  I was right, I COULDN”T DO IT!  God did it.

How easy is it to trust what God says, even if it’s tight, scary and uncomfortable?

Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to him.  You will eat the fruit of you labor; bblessings and prosperity will be yours.

Psalms 128:1-2

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!

I Used to Dress Myself

Just the other day I had a realization how much I have come to rely on my wife, when I had to ask my daughter if the pants I had matched my shirt.  It struck me then, I used to dress myself…..

In college I was a pretty snappy dresser, well as far as three pair of wranglers and four shirts is considered snappy.  I didn’t have a lot of choice, but I was happy with my limited choices.  You can hardly go wrong with wranglers, everything goes with them!  What others thought of my wardrobe?  I didn’t really care, I was a sharp dressed man and that’s how I choose to remember it!  I was happy with how I looked and that was all that mattered.

I don’t know when it happened; I started out selecting my own wardrobe.  Felicia would make a few pointers every now and then.  But I was in control of my clothing situation.  Over the last 22 years she has selected almost all of my clothes and has made lots of good choices.  I still wear wranglers, but there have been some changes.  It started when Wrangler came out with the Riata dress slacks, she got me one pair…they were black.  Then it was a khaki colored pair, if you had told me 20 years ago that khaki was a color….I’d have just thought you were making stuff up!  Khaki wasn’t even a word!  Then another color and some of those preppy cinch jeans (I had to start wearing those to work, didn’t want them to be the best looking pair in my closet!).   Before long, it was amazing how worldly my closet looked….well if you consider riatas and wranglers amazing.  It was amazing to me anyway.

I recently started a new job and after 22 years of wearing wranglers to work every day, I was told I had to dress business appropriate.  I thought I had been!?!?!?!  After all, my wranglers were starched! 

So we inventoried my closet and bought two more pair of riatas.  Now there are a couple shades of black and khaki, plus one pair of army green ones.  My wife has kept me color coordinated through the years and I never realized it was happening!  All of the sudden I am in a position of not knowing if something matches….I usually ask Felicia before she leaves for work…..to dress me for the day.

So there I was, walking down the hall in our house, asking my daughter if my shirt and slacks matched…..and it hit me….

I used to dress myself….

Maybe I am, and was not back then, such a snappy dresser?  Surely not……maybe I didn’t have a good sense of style back then….nah!  I dressed just like all the cowboys I knew, I was a snappy dresser back then! 

I just don’t have a clue about what goes together now…..

Wal-Mart Can Build A Kentucky Derby Winner

In some of my other stories I have mentioned the wild things that we used to do in college; most of them involve a practical joke or two.  Some were of the horse wreck variety.  But I can honestly say, for the group I ran around with in college, we abused each other….but still had a whoppin’ good time.

I attended Lamar Community College, in Lamar Colorado.  The course was called Horse Training and Management.  During our freshman year we were all assigned a colt to ride, some turned out better than others.  It was a learning experience, and I suspect that some of us learned better than others!  During my sophomore year a couple of buddies ((Guy and Marc) and I had some extra time during the day. 

One Dark Prairie Night

I wrote about Dennis and our adventures riding the long yearlings in Remembering a Friend – She Bucked a Half Mile.  That was a lot of fun to do, think about again and write down.  Sometimes the best times are the some of the biggest wrecks.  During that same time frame when we had the two mares that Mr. Cramer wanted to turn into a stagecoach team (I wrote about them in the Honestly She Never Bucks with Me story too) was the incident of one dark prairie night.

As these two mares got to handling better, Dennis and I made longer and longer rides on them, sometimes getting in just before dark.  We covered a lot of ground and chased a few corriente steers around.  Just generally whooped it up, a couple of college cowboys getting paid to do something they would have done for free!  Just glad know one told Mr. Cramer that back then!  It was a good time, but if you push the limit to much…sometimes it will bite you!

Skunkology 101

I last wrote about skunks when I was that one getting dosed, so I thought I would tell another story where I was the witness and not the witnessee.  In college there was a guy that was from one of the European countries (Sweden, I think) and he was there to take the HTM course.  He said he wanted to learn all he could so that he could go back to his country and start a training stable with his Dad.  He was a pretty good guy, but we sure had a hard time understanding him sometimes.  So we did our darnedest to incorporate him in a wild cowboy lifestyle.  Fortunately for him he was somewhat immune to our cowboyology lessons.  But sometimes his curiosity got the better of him.

Fortuitous - Look it Up

My nephew just went off to college and I told him not to do anything I wouldn’t do.  Then I thought better of that, there wasn’t much that I didn’t do!  So I told him to be safe instead!  It did bring to mind some more stories of my college years, looking back it is pretty funny …but my buddy Matt probably didn’t think so at the time.

Matt, Rod and I ran around together a lot.  Matt being the oldest, he was the designated purchaser.  He collected the cash we had (if we had any!) and went to the liquor store.  He generally led Rod and I down a path of destruction by contributing to the delinquency of us minors.  Well, ok, we were already a couple of delinquents before we me Matt.   But once Matt was involved in the mix, it was Katy bar the door!  There are a lot of stories I could tell on the three of us, and I will tell some more in the future (statute of limitations and all).

It's Not Stop, Drop and Roll...But....

When I worked for the cutting horse trainer I mentioned in (I'll Show You How It's Done), I was still pretty wild and young.  After I had finally gotten to the point he trusted me to ride colts, I learned quite a lot.  As I said, most of it was of the “what not to do variety”, but I did learn a lot.

Once someone brought this big sorrel colt, he was pretty strong and could buck a little, but he actually turned into a pretty nice colt.  At the beginning, he was just a little twitchy.  I guess he was a little scared of what I was going do to him, and I didn’t have sense enough to see the danger signs or even offer him anything different.  Usually after about a week of riding in a pen, we started taking the 2YRO’s out into the pastures to ride.  This at times was a little western, especially with this particular colt! 

I’ll Show You How It’s Done

When I was in college, one of the requirements (of the HTM program) was to go on an internship.  For most of us this was a 6 month job interview.  So the hope was to learn something and come out of it with a job at the end.  At the time I was completely enamored with cutting horses.  So I chose one of the only trainers to ever win the triple crown of the cutting industry (for those that don’t know, this is the Futurity, Derby and the Classic).  I won’t use the name of the trainer; we’ll just call him Jim.  Everyone who knows me should know who this is, but if you don’t…sorry, don’t have permission to use his name.  I won’t tell any untruths, but the truth can be ugly sometimes.  I will use my friends names (again, no lies about what we did), but I can’t consider Jim a friend.

Its Always Funny When It Happens to Someone Else...Rev 2

I suppose my friends could tell some pretty good stories about me, maybe someday one of the will.  But, since this is my blog.....I get to tell stories about them.  I may or may not change the names to protect the not so innocent.  If you were there with me, you will know whose name is real and not!

This one has some second hand info from another friend (does that make him a second hand friend?  Just asking, I don't know.)  He was the one who actually saw the incident happen and I have already written about him, so I will use his name.

One of the requirements of the course, we took at Lamar, was working your colt on the weekend.  If you weren't going to be there you had to find some one to work it for you.  Typically there were a few of us that didn't go home to much or in this case lived locally, that fell into this duty.  There was a young lady that went home and she asked one of my buddies (we'll call him Rod) to work her horse.  Now, I don't know if there were ulterior motives for him to work her horse or not.  But, he did say he would do it.  Something he would regret for the next day or two or five!

Rod and Guy were both working in seperate round pens, they were side by side, and it was plenty cold.  Cold enough that you could see your breath in the air and I was afraid my weak little mustache was going to freeze off!  Needless to say, it was only Rod and Guy outside!  According to the story Guy tells, the horses were feeling pretty good.  Snorting and pitching around the pens!  At some point Rod got a little fusterated at the colt he was working and started pushing him a little.  Guy said he heard a "thump" and saw Rod get kicked in the " $%^& "!  Yep, you guessed it!  Same place as all those people get hit on America's Funniest Videos.

Now, here is where the story starts to get a little fuzzy.  According to Guy, he immediately leaped over the two fences to check on Rod.  According to Rod, he climbed the first fence and then started laughing so hard he had to stop in between!   Who knows what the truth is?!?  Rod always said it was a good thing he only got kicked once..If the horse had kicked again, he would have gotten kicked in the head (that wouldn't have been near so funny as the first kick) because he could not stand up or move!

Rod wobbled/crawled/was carried to the barn office and laid up the rest of the morning.  When I saw him, slowly coming down the stairs, he was as white as a ghost.  I wanted to feel sorry for him, I really did.  But I couldn't stop smiling...which eventually turned into laughing...laughing loudly......

Poor ol' Rod.....he really failed to see the humor in it!  We "medicated" him most of that day and the next two, but it was probably a week before he felt good enough to come back down to the barn.  Needless to say, the horse and the girl were not his favorite people after that.  I think the girl was just guilt by assocation!  On the bright side there was no permanent damage, he had 3 kids later on in life!  Rod was the one who always seemed to get hurt on our little excursions....might have to write about those later on.

A Horse, A Pair of Spurs and A 58 Ford Truck

After the couple of incidents Dennis, Guy and I had with the two mares (Remembering a Friend / She Bucked for Half Mile and Really Honestly....She Never Bucks With Me), the gentleman that owned the ranched decided they would not make a stagecoach team.

On a side note, this guy would buy 100 head of corriente steers and charge people to trail drive them into Cheyenne, for Cheyenne Frontier Days.  He supplied horses, saddles and food for 20 people to be cowboys for a week.  Made about $1000 a man to do this.  He would then sell the steers and bring horses and saddles back to Lamar.  One year he had planned to have a stagecoach and do day rides for people to watch.  That was our year.

Anyway, after he decided that the bay mare would not make a stage team horse (should have sent her to Cheyenne as a bucking horse, might have done pretty good at that!), he had Dennis and I haul her to the sale barn.  He said, "Boys, bring her home if she doesn't bring $700"  So off we went.  Woohoo!  Someone else was buying dinner, what a deal!

It started at the sale barn.  I was driving and turned to sharp for the goose neck trailer we were pulling, peeled the fender off of someone's trailer!  Dang!  But, being the upstanding citizens we were at that time....we told no one!  No one saw it, so it didn't happen!  (kinda like the "if a tree falls in the forest" thing).  We really thought that would be the worst of it.....

Dennis rode the mare through and the scale in the sale ring was jiggleing and shaking.  Due (I would like to think, anyway) to our superior horsemanship skills, so she wanted to keep her feet on the ground.  She only brought $400.  Man, couldn't these people see that the snorting, twitching, bug eyed mess in the sale ring was a fine piece of horse flesh?  Dennis even got brave (stupid?) enough to take the bridle off and ride her in the ring!  There were no takers to go higher than $400.  So, we loaded her into the trailer and headed off to supper.....at the Hogs Head.....

We "ate" supper for about 2 hours and met some gentlemen that were wanting to make a horse trade!  After much haggling, argueing and "toasting"....we decided on the mare and my spurs for a 58 Ford pickup.  First thing we did was go to their house and drive the truck around, man it was a cherry!  Completely refurbished and ready to roll!  While Dennis and I drove around, the fellas went inside and invited thier wives to come down to the Hogs Head and look at thier new horse.  (probably should have stopped that little item from happening).  After we got back, Dennis pulled me aside and said he thought he could come up with half of the $700 for the mare.  Well, being the semi-intelligent young man that I was...I figured that left me with $350 to raise.  I think we both thought we had enough friends and family that we could pull this off!  We toasted the deal and shook hands!  I really believe the guys were pretty excited about thier new horse.  Heck, I knew Dennis and I were pretty excited about our new truck!   Then the party died, their wives showed up!  Probably decided they needed to stop the two idiots that lived in town from trading with two idiots that had a horse!   Boy, they really kiboshed the deal....we were bummed!

But, beings how the deal had taken 2 hours and a fair amount of alcohol was ingested....we got over it!  We loaded back into our truck and headed back to Lamar (the Lord was with us because neither of had any business behind the wheel.  I apologize for that now!)  Once we had delivered the mare back to her pen, we did what any normal collge kids(well normal for our group, anyway) would do after a night like that.....we headed back to another party at the dorm!  Looking back at this and looking forward to the fact that I will have kids in college in a few years, I DO NOT CONDONE THIS TYPE OF BEHAVIOR!  It was just two wild cowboys, who didn't have a lick of sense!  And since I will have girls in college I will just say......boys have cooties, girls....just stay away from them!

Remembering a Friend / She Bucked for a Half Mile

Just found out today a friend from college died back in 1998.  Got me to thinking about some of the fun we had when we were in college.  Most people go to college, but I doubt they had as much fun as we did back then!

In a previous posting Honestly...She Never Bucks with Me I mentioned Dennis.  Dennis was the kind of guy that would help you no matter what, so it made you want to help him.  I have a lot of stories about Dennis, and most will never see print (as Johnny Cash said,"You don't tell everything").  The mare Dennis rode in that posting was a big strong bay mare, I think she was about 7 (barely green broke).  We, of course, were young, tough buckaroos....never got bucked off, ect.  After we rode all of those long yearlings, old school...snubbing them to a post, cinching them up and turning them loose.  Those young horses really couldn't buck all that hard, which really gave us huge egos!  By golly, there wasn't a horse that could buck us off after that.  The first day we rode the bay mare, she did great saddling up...we really thought we were only going to be legging her up to turn the two of them into a stagecoach team.  Ha!  If  we only knew!  Headed out into the pasture and struck a long trot.  Man, everything was going great!  Dennis suggested we kick them up into a lope, my filly picked up a lope and was as smooth as glass (Contrary to what Guy might say, he spoke about her lineage - check the link above).  I looked over and Dennis was grabbing leather, Ol' Bay had her head down and looked like she was trying our for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo!  WOW, could she buck!  Dennis never said a word, but he was grabbing at everything that went by trying to pull her head up.  And of course, it was happening to someone else, so I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen!  Well, I loped along beside the NFR qaulifing attempt for about a half a mile before Dennis  got her head up.  Curiously, he used the same language that Guy used a week or two later to describe the mare I was riding, looking back I didn't even know the two mares were related!  I think the only reason she stopped bucking, besides being a little tired, was the fence that we came to!  I really couldn't tell who was breathing harder and I give Dennis all the credit, he never suggested we trade (Like I would fall for that).  After the first episode, Ol' Bay never bucked like that again...she did buck about every other time he rode her, just not like the first time.  Needless to say neither of the mares ever made a stagecoach team.  Hmmm....that might have something to do with the two hon-yocks that were riding them...nah, it was the horses.  We ended up taking them to the sale and that is another story that involves a trade, a 58 Ford truck and a pair of spurs!  Might have to tell that one sometime....

Dennis Weis  1967-1998  A good friend.

It's Funny When It Happens To Someone Else

Got an email from and old friend after my last post, we laughed remembering how that mare was not supposed to buck.  He said anytime someone brings him a horse to ride and says "it never bucks", he thinks about that day.  It got me to thinking about some of the (funny now) wrecks that we had back then.  I specifically remember a horse that we called Ol' Red (even though he was only a 2YRO).

When the horses were brought in for us to start, they were unassigned.  Meaning you didn't know which one you would get.  Our instructors would assign them based on our ability as riders.  I would say horsemanship abilities, but thinking back...we didn't have much of that.  Our best feature was probably that we were young, limber and bounced when we hit the ground.  Anyway, before they were assigned we had to get them out of the stalls to exercise them.  Well Ol' Red was a little on the wild side....he was brought in an open stock trailer and ran down the alley to a stall.  Pretty much untouched.  Guy drew the short straw to exercise him and when he opened the stall, Red reached out with his front foot and removed some buttons from Guys jacket!  Guy shut the stall door, with saucer like eyes and said, "I do believe he is exercised!"

Really, Honestly...She Never Bucks With Me

I am working a youg horse right now and I think back to how I used to do it before age and brains came together.  I don't think much of the way I used to start colts, but at the time it was fun!

When I was in college, a buddy (we'll call him Dennis) and I were hired to put a few rides on some long yearlings and ride a couple of older horses to leg them up.  The owner of the ranch wanted to use the older horses for a stagecoach team.  So we started with the long yearlings.  We did it the old fashioned way, tied them to a snubbing post, blindfolded them, and crawled in the middle.  It was a lot of fun, we were young and made of rubber.  To get bucked off of long yearlings wasn't a big deal.