Got Feedback?
Send a letter to the editor.

Subscribe now: RSS news feed, plus free headlines for your site

Ah, the horses I have known

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, June 9, 2008

 E-mail this page    Printer-friendly page

The author talks with Tejas, one of the horses rescued by the Bluebonnet Equine Humane Society. Photo by Micheal Boddy.

When I was a little girl, I wanted a horse. Not a pony, a horse. No big surprise there. I wonder if there are many little girls who don’t want horses or ponies. Boys don’t seem to suffer from equine yearnings as often, but I’m not prepared to discuss the psychology therein.

I had a whole chest full of horse and rider figures when I was a child, and those were my go-to toys when I played indoors. I never did get a real horse of my own, but I was around horses fairly often as a child.

Now that I recall them, some of the horses I was around as a child should have squelched the desire to have one of my own, but they didn’t.

My best friend in childhood, Nancy, had relatives who kept livestock and lived within walking distance of both our houses. Among their livestock were a few able-bodied horses we were forbidden to ride, or attempt to ride. And one extremely aged Palomino that we were allowed to ride, or attempt to ride.

In addition to being extremely aged, Goldie was extremely fat. Her back was so broad you had to sit sidesaddle fashion, because trying to straddle her broad back was so uncomfortable. But you couldn’t call it sidesaddle, because there was no saddle. No saddle would fit Goldie, so you slid off a lot. And you didn’t so much ride her as sit on her back while she did whatever she felt like doing. If she happened to walk a few steps to get to a new patch of grass, you felt immensely pleased with your riding experience. When she got tired of you, she’d stretch her neck around and bite the calf of your leg.

There was a beautiful black pony in the yard behind my childhood home. It picked my sister up by her hair once, hoisting her off the ground and causing me to distrust ponies ever after.

Another friend had a horse no one was allowed to ride. I never knew why, exactly, only that suggesting it caused her mother to roll her eyes and say, “No, you don’t want to do that.” I was allowed to pet and feed the horse, which was an enormous chestnut. He always showed his appreciation by leaning into me until I was crushed between him and whatever he could find to crush me against. Still I wanted a horse of my own.

Little girls who aren’t allowed a horse of their own have to resort to toy horses, and I was a connoisseur. I had a broomstick horse with a yellow yarn mane that was fun until I was 5 or so. I had one of those red and black wood rocking horses that was good for indoor riding. I was a hardcore merry-go-round fan. Whenever one presented itself, I’d watch it a while before I boarded, finding the best mount and then cutting it out of the herd as soon as the merry-go-round stopped moving.

My all-time favorite steed lived on the sidewalk outside Smith’s Grocery in Turley, OK. He was larger than most sidewalk steeds, almost real-life Shetland pony sized which, when I was 4, made him roughly the size of a water bison. He was jet black, and molded so that his mane and tail flowed behind him. Some sidewalk horses just jiggled you, but the Smith’s horse moved backward and forward while at the same time his head dipped up and down, more like the real motion of a horse.

I have no idea how much he cost, because my mother always put the coin in after I had mounted. It was 1959, so maybe a nickel or even a dime. He was worth it. Sometimes some other little kid would come and stand by with his mom, waiting for me to get off so he could have a turn. I hated that kid, whoever he happened to be.

When I was about 12, a friend named Marsha invited me over to go riding. I accepted before she’d finished the sentence. There were three horses present at Marsha’s house that day: Marsha’s barrel horse, which of course she would ride; her mother’s horse, which was forbidden; and her brother’s horse, a young bay. Of course I took the brother’s horse. Then it transpired that the saddles and bridle were in the trailer, which was locked, but that was no problem. Marsha said so.

What Marsha didn’t say was, her brother had gotten the bay just three days before, and had yet to ride it successfully—that is, without being injured in some way. I got onto the animal, which was no small feat, given the lack of stirrups and the fact that the horse refused to approach the fence or anything else I could climb on. I finally accomplished it Tom Mix style, by running and jumping. I think I startled him, and he began to buck wildly.

I have no idea how I stayed on that horse. I have no idea why I stayed on that horse. But I did.

When he got tired, he began trying to bite my legs, but Goldie had taught me well. I spent the first few minutes of my ride hiking one leg and then the other out of reach of his teeth. He then found a couple of trees with low limbs near the fence line, and tried scraping me off. At this point Marsha called out encouragement to the effect that he would “settle down in a minute.” I had not yet determined Marsha to be a pathological liar, so I persevered.

The bay’s next move was to sidle over to the fence and attempt to mash my legs against it. When that maneuver failed, he took off like a jet. Not trotting, not cantering, but running full out, his legs extending completely, his body stretched out. It was lovely, for a couple of minutes.

That’s how long it took us to cross the pasture. As the far fence loomed, I tried to console myself by telling myself the horse wasn’t stupid and was certainly not going to crash into the fence like an out-of-control car. The fence got closer and the horse kept going, and it dawned on me that the horse meant to jump the fence and keep right on going, with me or without me.

I didn’t panic. I wasn’t experienced enough to know that I should have been panicking. I wound my hand up in the horse’s mane and, seconds before we reached the fence, tried to pull his head around and turn him.

You wouldn’t think such a large animal moving at such a speed could stop that fast. The bay stiffened his front legs, digging into the earth as he slid to a complete, abrupt stop.

I didn’t stop. I executed a nice summersault over the horse’s head, and landed on my back on the barbed wire fence, then slid down the other side of it.

The horse trotted nonchalantly back to the stable and had a little snack. I limped back to the house, dripping blood and muttering obscenities. I had to go get a tetanus booster, but declined the doctor’s offer of stitches, opting to keep the scars instead.

Two days later I went on a 10-mile trail ride with Marsha. I borrowed a horse from the people on whose property everyone was riding. Evidently Marsha’s mom told them about my experience with her brother’s horse. I suppose they thought it was kind to loan me a very old, slow, sedate mount that wasn’t the least bit interested in keeping up with all the other horses. He walked everywhere. Sauntered, really.

Midway through the ride, when everyone else was a good mile ahead of us, I managed to find a spot with my heels that caused him to break into a trot. Then I couldn’t make him stop. We trotted the rest of the trail ride. I could bring him to a halt, but when we started off again, he trotted. By the time we got back to the camp, my butt felt like—well, like my damned horse had trotted for five miles.

I still love horses. I talk to them whenever I can. But I don’t sit on them. Horses and I have reached an understanding—I don’t sit on them, and they don’t sit on me.

But I really miss that Smith’s Grocery horse.

 E-mail this page
 Printer-friendly page