I had several horses that traveled well, and we liked. One of my favorites was Pat, he was a good riding horse, broke to harness and easy to ride. When my dad went with us, Pat was his horse. My uncle Larry ended up with him and felt the same as me, a good horse!
His son Jeff said,” He ended up being mine. Best horse ever.”
His brother Burt told me years later that Pat spent his final years on Uncle Herbert’s farm where is buried, he was a wonderful horse! I agree, he was. To talk about him now and to see how his life turned out says a lot about my family. Farm families have a different view of animals then most people today. It’s just my opinion but what is called the ‘Disney syndrome’ has shaped the view of animals in our society. Animals have become too ‘human like’ to most people, portrayed as having the same feelings as we do, the same family relationships and feelings toward each other.
This used to bother me, growing up on a farm, our dogs and cats didn’t live inside with us, they found their own place, usually snuggled into the hay in the barn on a cold winter night. They were close to our family, and we cared about them but if one of them got sick or hurt, we didn’t let them suffer but the only animals that we would pay to have a vet look at them were the animals that brought in an income or were used to work, cows, pigs, or horses, etc.
I tried not to say anything when someone told me they spent $4000 dollars to fly their mongrel dog to Anchorage to the vet. I made a big mistake once and made a comment that I could have taken of the problem for a penny, the cost of a bullet. Later I realized how hurtful and uncaring my comment was. It caused a lot of scrutiny on my part to try to understand. It really opened my eyes when my sister-in-law told me why her little dog was so important to her. When going through a terrible divorce and trying to recover from the abuse that affected her the rest of her life, she explained that she bought this little pup for company, being alone, life seemed unbearable. She told me this little pup kissed her tears away every time she cried. Now that she is married to Laurels brother, she is happy and no longer crying all the time, she still loves her dog, Oscar was there when she needed someone to kiss her tears away, did those feelings go away when her life changed for the good? No, she never forgot that he was the only one who loved and stood by her in those trying times.
This helped me realize why people can get attached to their pets in our modern society because of cruel and uncaring people. Animals usually give you unconditional love. Do I feel differently? No, I think my way of viewing animals is the best if that’s how you feel, but now I understand the importance of a pet who is always there for you. I think I have instilled this view in my kids, when we were visiting West Virginia from Alaska, my daughter was telling my sister that her cat died just before we flew back home. My sister asked her if she had a funeral for the cat. My daughter, her eyes big said “it’s just a cat.” She loved her cat, but it wasn’t human. It’s a sad situation when humans must turn to animals for love and companionship because of their treatment by humans. Is it wrong? I don’t think so and I am glad that those who have been mistreated have someone to kiss their tears away.
Before I started school, I had a pony, my dad had gotten a nice saddle and I really enjoyed it. I rode it a lot in the winter although he didn’t seem to like the cold weather. I can remember the smell when I walked into the barn. We had a dairy farm so you could always smell the cows and hay, but it was the horse smell that I loved. We always had sweet feed and I still take a deep breath when I go into Southern States, the smell of the feed brings back memories of my first pony.
He was a little vindictive when I rode him in the winter, because when I started him home, he would take off at top speed and I couldn’t stop him. He went into the barn at top speed and tried to drag me off by going between the door and the tractor wheel. He succeeded about half the time, but I learned to pull my foot out of the stirrup and get out of the way.
When I got out of the army I got back into horses and all my brothers and dad went with me. Even my youngest brother Donnie got to ride. Mom wasn’t happy about this, but I told her I didn’t want to see them grow up to be sissies. Once I put Donnie on a horse that was so big, it didn’t know he had anyone on his back. He lowered his heat to eat, and Donnie went down his neck until he was holding on for dear life, to the horses’ ears. The horse didn’t really mind but Donnie eventually lost his grip and fell off, knocking the breath out of him. Mom came running out, but Donnie gasped ‘I’m ok’ mom, wasn’t thrilled and years later when I had kids and brought them back from Alaska to visit, she told me to take them down to Uncle Larry’s so they could ride ponies. Without thinking, I told her it was too dangerous. She really let me have it, saying it was all right for my kids but not yours? There wasn’t much I could say but my kids never did ride pony’s while they were growing up. They missed out not having the opportunity. My daughter did learn to ride on a sheep hunt in Alaska, but I worried about her the whole time.
I used my horses a lot, they didn’t just stand in the field with no attention. I would take my brothers and dad back into the mountains and camping for several days at a time. I also made a trip went with My uncle Larry and brother-in-law Mike.
This trip didn’t aways work out the way I expected. I was on a palomino, Coco’s colt. The first day, when we broke camp the next morning, Coco wouldn’t go so Mike and Larry went ahead figuring Coco would follow. When that didn’t work, I got her over close to a tree and broke off a switch. Her ears were down, and she was trying to get her head down. I gave her a tap with the switch and the rodeo started, she went a little crazy, but I managed to stay on. After about 5 minutes (seemed like an hour) her head and ears came up and, the last thing I remembered was thinking ‘guess I showed her’. She went straight up on her hind legs and over backwards. I don’t remember how but I got out from underneath her. Larry and Mike came running back in a panic. All I could see was dust and mountains. The saddle horn broke and she was getting up, I rolled over and got on my feet. They kept asking me if I was ok, I said yes. I didn’t tell them I didn’t know who they were. Larry took my horse and put me on his quarter horse. Everything seemed to be ok, I rode in the back so I could watch them. Very strange trying to remember your name. I didn’t know who I was, where I was or who they were. A couple of hours later I remembered who I was, at camp that night I remembered Larry and then Mike. Never did remember how we got there or any other details. What I still find strange is, I was embarrassed and never told them I had amnesia. I have told others but never told Larry or Mike.
Donnie was so young I didn’t take him as much as the others, once we took the horses into the river hills, close to the house for an overnight trip to see how they would do, it worked out well so the next trip to the mountains I took one of small ponies, Little Silver, and Donnie. Little Silver must have not liked the trip in the truck because the next day when we broke camp and started over the first mountain, he started limping.
I had Donnie stay on him for a while, but he eventually stopped and laid down. That ruined the trip, we packed up and went home. When we turned them loose in the pasture field, he took off running, kicking up his heals. He was a big faker, but we never could get him to leave the farm again and not pull the same thing. I even noticed when he started limping, sometimes he would switch legs, smart little pony! He was ok if we went somewhere within ‘smell’ of the farm.
I was always doing what I could to give them the best grass, they loved eating in the front yard so I would stake them out. Having to go out and move their stakes got to be old so I got the bright idea of tying the rope to a cinder block, figuring they could drag the block and get fresh grass. Mom started screaming at me, saying “what is wrong with that horse! I looked out the window and couldn’t believe my eyes, the horse was running as hard as he could, the block about 10 ft behind him, up in the air. The horse was running while looking behind him at this wild block that he couldn’t get away from. When he stopped, the block would come flying forward, scaring him so he turned around and started back the other way. It took me a while to catch him, get him calmed and remove the block. Time to go back to the stake, lesson learned, horses don’t like anything moving around their feet, I never tried that again.
I was always trading or buying horses and ended up with several good ones, Pat being the best. He was a good rider but also worked. I made a living with him for about six months, cutting, hauling locust posts for the coal mines. He is the horse my dad always rode, plenty of spirit but if a kid were riding him and fell off, he would stop his foot in midair until he knew where the kid was, safest horse I ever had.
I also had several that weren’t any good, I found a quarter horse that was so fast he could turn on a dime. You could be riding full speed, swing down from the saddle to get off and he would stop before your foot hit the ground. He wasn’t very far off, so I decided to ride him the two miles home to try him out. We had gone about a half mile, and he turned around and started back home. I couldn’t hold him, and he was almost immediately going full speed. I started to step down and he stopped, I got back on, and he started running again, completely uncontrollable.
I ended up walking him home, the next day he was fine, and I rode him all day. We took three other horses and went for a short ride about a mile from the house. He started to trot, then broke into a hard run, I couldn’t hold him. We were about a hundred yards from my neighbor’s house, but I decided to let him run. What I didn’t count on was when we were right beside their house, he suddenly turned up there driveway instead of staying on the dirt road we were on. The next thing I knew he and went through the middle of a party they were having on their front lawn, knocking over chairs and tables, scaring everyone half to death. It was a miracle no one was hurt but the look on their faces told the story. There wasn’t anything I could do but hold on. I could have stepped down and he would have stopped, but from the look on their faces, it didn’t seem the safe thing for me to do so I tipped my hat and let him go. After we got out of sight of the party, he wouldn’t quit and was so hot and gasping for air, I got down so he would stop. I walked him home, going a different way since I didn’t really want to go past my neighbor again.
I’ll have to say, this was the best horse I ever had, so fast and able to turn on a dime but was going to cost me all my neighbors. The next time or two I rode him, the perfect horse, then in our yard, I got on and he went berserk, running as if he had no control of himself. This time, I decided to ride him out, but he went through a barb wire fence then jumped onto my dad’s car, going across the hood and down the other side. Being afraid he would hurt himself I got off. I tried several more times but finally gave up. I talked to several people in the area and learned he had killed a young woman when she tried to control him, not on purpose but causing a head injury when she fell off under his feet. I finally sold him cheap, making full disclosure as to his problems. They said they got control of him by starving him and beating him until he stopped. Later, I saw him, he was nothing but skin and bones. If I had known that was their plan, I would never have sold the horse to them, better to have lived his life out in the pasture. He was always friendly, gentle, and easy to catch, call him and he would come right up to you. He just wasn’t safe to ride. An old timer told me later he suspected he had a problem with a nerve in his back, if it got pressure on it, he went a little crazy and would have run until he dropped. Great disappointment, he was a good horse when he wasn’t trying to kill you.
Once when we were planning a trip to Baker Sods, I had a horse get sick so stopped to look at a horse I had been interested in. He was huge for a riding horse, but I liked him so bought him and headed to the mountains with him in the truck. We camped at Little Blackfork that night, planning to head for Baker Sods the next morning. That night I woke up to the sound of something moving around camp. I got up and went outside and was face to face with the new horse. Talk about intimidation, he weighed over nine hundred pounds, pure white and had what they called a ‘glass eye or blue eye.’ We stood face to face for about a minute, neither one of us moving. I reached down and picked up a feed bucket and held it out. He hesitated but came a couple of steps closer. I had picked up a halter on the way out of the tent so stood there holding out the bucket. As he came closer, the hair started to stand up on the back of my neck, this was a big horse that was getting bigger all the time as he got closer. In the moonlight, he got bigger every second. Looking at me with his glass eye didn’t help either.
When he got close enough to put his nose in the bucket, I attempted to put my hand on the back of his neck. As soon as I did that, he raised his head, pulling me off my feet. There I stood, off the ground but hanging on. I didn’t panic just stood quiet and calm or things might have ended differently. After a few seconds, he put his head down and took a bite of the oats in the bucket, allowing me to slip the halter on. Lesson learned, don’t take a new horse on a ride like this for first time working with him. From that day on, he was my horse, and I spent a lot of time ‘looking through his ears.’ One of the best I had, almost as good as Pat.
The man I bought him from said his name was Silver, so we now had two horses with the same name, mine became Big Silver, Donnie’s pony became Little Silver. I worried about putting them in the same field so kept them separated for a while. When I did put them together, Little Silver’s ears came back, he bared his teeth and started for Big Silver who took off running as hard as he could, size wasn’t a factor, Little Silver was there first, he was king.
I saw a lot of country with this horse, comfortable to ride and as solid as any horse I had. On a steep trail once with a straight down drop off. He never flinched and took me through, the trail so narrow, my leg was scraping the bank. I saw a lot of country with this horse, comfortable to ride and as solid as any horse I had. On a steep trail once with a straight down drop off. He never flinched and took me everywhere I asked him to go.
Once the trail so narrow, my leg was scraping the bank. He didn’t seem to be afraid of snakes, stepping over them without a problem. Like all horses, he could be flighty, once when we came off the mountain and were taking the saddles off so we could load them om the truck, I made the mistake of taking off the strap that secured a bag I had tied over the saddle horn and left it attached to the horn. I set it on the ground and started to take the saddle off. He moved a little and the bag sitting on the ground dragged, the sound of that bag dragging put him into a panic, up in the air he went, me hanging on with my feet off the ground. I never knew the strength of a leather thong, he dragged me for a couple of minutes before I gained control, scaring my brothers and their horses half to death, quite a rodeo. Lesson learned, always untie, and remove the bag first.
I had several horses over the years, one that was a biter, one that liked to ease over and step on your foot, one that sucked air in while you were putting the saddle on, it would get loose and slide down at the worst possible moment after he let his breath out.
Twice, I made a living cutting timber with the use of a horse, once with Pat to pull out locust trees for posts we sold to the mines. Another time when we found a good piece of timber you couldn’t get to with conventional equipment. It was on what they call a high wall, and area that had been strip mined by using large earth moving equipment to take the surface off until they reached the vein of coal. Using a drill to get earth samples to determine how deep the coal was. It sometimes would be several hundred feet down to the vein. When they finished you had a cliff where they stopped removing the dirt. In this case, there was good timber, Walnut and Ash left on top of the highwall. With only a narrow path to get to the top of the highwall, it wasn’t possible to get our dozer on top of the hill. We got the timber cheap because they didn’t think it could be logged. There are regulations to keep them from doing this now, they have restoration practices that is easier on the land. In the 70’s when I was logging, they could do almost anything they wanted.
We bought a big workhorse from a farmer and started to log it with the horse. It was a good horse but had spent most of its life on a farm, pulling a plow or wagon, now we had him going through the woods while we cut trees. This freaked him out, he would swing his head from side to side, as if he wanted to make sure one of the trees wasn’t going to fall on him. He did good though, pulling the logs out for us even though it was on a steep hillside. We had a place cleared where we could pull a log over to the highwall, stop the horse, unhook then use can’t hooks to roll it over the hill. There was a hole full of water (about six feet deep) below that cushioned the fall. At the end of the day, we would hook onto the logs and pull them out with our dozer. Sometimes we had to swim down to hook them up so we could pull them out. This wasn’t bad in the summer, giving us a way to cool off. We used the dozer to pull them to the landing where we loaded them on the truck.
It was hard work, but the pay was good, and I enjoyed working with the horse. The horse obeyed voice commands and after a while knew where to go. When he got to the area, we rolled the logs off, we would yell hall and he would stop. With gee (right) hall (left) or whoa to stop. He was so obedient to these commands, he almost got killed one day. When Frank went down to unhook, he needed the horse to turn to the right after he unhooked but called out gee instead of haw and by mistake, Old Bill obediently turned left, right off the highwall. We thought we had lost him, but he almost ran over us when he scrambled back up the wall. We weren’t aware of a small ledge, about two feet wide, when he hit that, it gave him enough of a foothold, he made it back up the hill.
You must be extremely careful working a horse in the woods because you can get underneath the area you are pulling the log. While I was cutting down a tree, I noticed Frank was going around the hill with a big log. Knowing what was going to happen, I shut off the saw and tried to get his attention. He couldn’t hear so I grabbed the saw and started running toward them. I was about twenty feet above them when the log rolled, pinning Frank to the ground. The horse responded to the whoa I screamed at him but was nervous because of being on the sidehill.
I moved down the hill and was horrified at what I saw. Frank’s legs were pointing the opposite direction, his torso was facing the front, his legs facing backward, Bill was prancing a little, not good at all. I got below the horse and used a piece of a tree limb laying there to dig under the log and get his legs straightened out, then was able to pull him out from underneath the log. Just as I pulled him out, Bill had had enough and started pulling. This caused the log to roll. If frank had still been there, he would have been killed. Scary experience, Frank was ok, but we were both so shaken up, we stopped for the day.