Horse Time

Saturday last I was scheduled for an out of town trip. I currently have five horses under saddle and thought I would get three of them worked in the cool of the morning before I left for a couple of days.

Trooper is the biggest horse on the outfit weighing in at 1375 pounds. The horse is nine years old and got a late start. He is intelligent, loves people, strong as an ox but twitchy. If anything flaps near him he reacts violently either with a kick of devastating power or he just blows up. I have worked him with the usual assortment of plastic bags, tarps, and slickers, but he just will not yield to anything that flaps around him. He is a chore to throw a saddle pack on though he is getting a bit better about it. Panniers on a Saw Buck are still considered very threatening so it is a slow process and the panniers have to be packed while they are on him.

I saddled up Lancer with the saddle pack, saddled Trooper to pony as the number three horse in the string led by Stryker. Everything was fine until, not paying attention, I shook out my saddle coat to roll and tie behind my cantle. Trooper blew up and came down with his chin on the tie rail. I could tell he was hurt as he was working his jaw and was in obvious pain. My first concern was that he had broken his jaw - a serious, possibly fatal injury in a horse if he was not able to eat. There was plenty of blood pouring out of his mouth but his teeth appeared to be OK. His lower lip was split clear through right down the center for about three quarters of an inch. Jeeez.

It was 10:00 AM on a Saturday morning. Usually not a good time for access to veterinary care. Fortunately, Drs. Frank and Becky Anderson in Grants keep their clinic open for half a day on Saturdays. I phoned and explained to Becky the nature of the injury and she said I better bring him in. It is an eighty mile one way trip and the clinic closed at noon so the scramble began. Unsaddle and turn out the horses, hook up the horse trailer. check tires, and load the injured horse. So much for my trip out of town. Trooper had not been in a trailer in three years, but he was a grand lad and just walked in and started eating the can of oats I put in his manger. Bribery works on politicians and horses. We headed for Grants up across the North Plains and through the Narrows of the Malpais.

I arrived just at noon and Doctor Frank went right to work on the big horse. He did a superb job of suturing the lip and by 1:30 PM I was putting a groggy and mellow horse back in the trailer. When I first started hauling horses at fifteen years of age, my adopted granddad told me something I have never forgotten. "There is no such thing as taking a corner too slow when hauling horses." In keeping with that advice given nearly fifty years past we eased out of town and headed home.

I always thank the Good Lord for the professionalism, skill and care of veterinarians. Having spent too much of my life as a patient in emergency rooms and hospitals, it has been my experience that veterinarians are far more caring than human doctors and combine the technical skills of a physician with the caring attributes of nurses. We have three wonderful veterinarians between eighty and one hundred fifteen miles away. Just around the corner out here in this remote country.

Dr. Becky Anderson is a dedicated wagon team driver and teaches courses on the skill sets needed. I mentioned I was thinking of getting a wagon and a team with the cost of fuel being so high. Holy cow. I have never seen Becky so animated. She gave me a fascinating introduction on horse and wagon types and told me about an auction in Colorado during the month of July where there will be upwards of 5000 wagons and horses to look at.

It is sixty miles to a real grocery store from the ranch so a trip for groceries would take about seven days. Three days to get there, a day to shop, and three days home. Not very practical but maybe necessary if the damn Iranians shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Driving a wagon is something I have always enjoyed. I drove a stage in Tombstone, Arizona for a few days over 30 years ago to help out a friend who was the regular driver. My passengers had no idea of my inexperience, but the gentle giants, in a four-up knew what to do. It took me about two hours to get them hitched and it's a wonder I didn't hang myself in all the complicated straps and buckles but the stage managed to stay behind the horses. That was before the horses had to wear diapers so the horse poop would not offend the yuppie tourists, phoney cowboys, witness protection program participants, and bikers that run over the place now. For crying out loud,

I suppose I should explain the reference to the Witness Protection Program. Wandering around the tourist trap of Tombstone and appearing in the bars as locals are a bunch of pasty faced, shifty eyed, blue-shadow jawed guys with names like Buckshot, Desert Bob, Muleskinner, and so forth. When they get to talking, out come these annoying New Jersey, New York and Chicago accents. They wear Old West clothing like I do, but there are no spur or saddle marks on their boots, their sidearms are cheap, holstered in Mexican-made leather and they don't know which end of a horse gets up first.

A few years back, I was wrapped around a bit of tequila in Big Nose Kate's Saloon listening to a bunch of these dolts talk about their skills with weapons, when I made the comment loud enough for most in the bar to hear that the place looked like a dumping ground for the Federal Witness Protection Program. You could have heard a pin drop and everybody started glaring at me and then eyeing one another.

City fathers, politicians and cops are not known for their good sense. They are adept at limiting freedom and picking the pockets of citizens. Not too long ago, some idiot with a badge issued a citation to a cowboy riding his horse out of town after dark because his horse did not have a tail light. The cowboy beat the ticket.

I kept Trooper up for a day in an isolation corral and put him on the antibiotics the doc had provided. By the second day he was back out with his rangemates with no idea he had blue sutures the size of Marlin fishing line sticking out of his lower lip.

It is a maxim around horses that if they cannot find a way to hurt themselves, they will invent one. If you live with horses, you get used to living on horse time because they will determine what you will do no matter what plans you have made. It is a good life, but it requires sacrifices that those used to the conveniences of urban life usually do not find to their liking. That is not a bad thing, because most of them when they do move out here from whatever urban cesspool they made their money in, the majority of them go about trying to change this beautiful country into the mess they left. They put up fences and locked gates, turn the grass upside down and pollute and waste what little water there is out here.

I was brought up out in cow country and small towns and I have lived in large cities. I couldn't wait to get back "home." Since I moved here into west-central New Mexico, I have tried my level best to adapt to the mores and ways of the local community out of respect for the folks that have lived here for generations. It can be eye-crossing frustrating at times but it seems like the right thing to do. Charlie Russell, the great western artist, had it right when he said that if he had his way, "none of you sonsabitches would be out here anyway."

Far Rider

See to your weapons and stand to your horses