A School Horse Legacy, Volume 2: More Tails. . .

A School Horse Legacy: Volume 2

…More Tails

By Anne C. Wade Hornsby

Copyright 2018 Anne C. Wade-Hornsby

All rights reserved.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-692-96688-4

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INTRODUCTION

The second volume of A School Horse Legacy will introduce you to more personalities and tales in and out of the riding school.  Little did I realize that I would be teaching riding lessons and teaching regular school well into my sixties and that even past seventy, the riding, driving and lessons go on! I guess I don’t know what retirement is supposed to mean. In 2006, when I retired from public school teaching in Riverside, California, I continued teaching riding lessons pretty much as I always had.  My original riding school was transferred to a boarding facility owned by an old friend, Bill Murray. I’d known Bill for forty years, and his ranch was a school, training, and boarding stable, as well as a refuge for me from 2000 to 2012.  With the disillusion of my first marriage, I also lost the property that had been the home of the riding school for over twenty years, but the equipment, expertise, and of course, several of my wonderful horses, came with ME.  That is all part of the ongoing story!

Tales by their nature can be timeless, cautionary, educational, interesting, amusing, and more. At their best, they stir memories that are the substrata, the bedrock, that are the foundation of our understanding and handling of what goes on around us. The last chapter of Volume One included anecdotes from former students that go far past my own memories. The relationships my students had with the horses they worked with made impressions that amaze and humble me in their recall. The owner, Marie-Jean, of the first horse I ever had in training, Eva, visited recently with her eight year old daughter, who rode the twenty-two year-old son of Rhiannon, the mare given to me by my first student. 

MJ was a high school student when she started lessons with me.  Rhi is long gone. The power of the experiences, translated into stories and memories, transcends time. Paloma, at the age of eight, demands that her mom let her ride, and the tight hugs she gave Rhiannon’s son are part of a current, an aura, that flows around and through equine enthusiasts since the cave painters, Neptune, Bellraphon, Xerxes, Alexander the Great, Podowsky, my students, and …me.

I don’t think the role of horses in civilization can be overstated. They provided food, transport, and initiation into the world of natural and spiritual wonder in a way I believe is unique.  Horses allowed humans to become stronger than they were themselves  - to explore, create and carry their corporeal dreams forward. Today, there are places that still use horses as a necessary or preferred mode of transport. They are eaten in some countries. In certain situations, they out-perform heavy machinery. And they continue to offer, by their particular ability to carry a person on their backs, or be driven, a chance to interact with part of the natural world, to allow one to share in an experience bigger than one’s personal limits.

I know the part they played in my own life, of course. As I get older, I think about it a lot. Many injuries and surgeries have made me quite aware of what I can and can’t do.  Those challenges led me in directions I would never have tried. I liked 3-Day Eventing, riding to hounds, and fast paced trail rides. I still ride. Being chased by bees in the middle of nowhere on an endurance ride and driving my buckboard through strawberry and cilantro fields are only a couple of adventures I got to share with students because I can no longer jump. I learned to drive carriages because Combined Driving Events are as thrilling to me as riding in 3-Day Events used to be, but I am (usually) more in control.  Trying to help my students to be better than I am, to take what I can teach them, love it, and allow their experiences to make their lives richer:  that is the BEST! Oh, the places our horses take us, and the tales to tell… Enjoy.

CHAPTER 1

BENJAMIN (Benny): Whatever You Want – Loud and Clear

As the years progressed at the riding school, I lost several of my wonderful old school masters for a simple reason:  they went to a well-deserved rest where they could spend it any way they wanted.  Meanwhile, back here on Earth, I was getting more students and needed safe, healthy horses. Their age was never much of a concern. Horses getting on in years were usually the ones that came my way, from owners who trusted that I would give their well-loved family member a job they could handle and that I would take responsibility for whatever decisions had to be made in the future.  In return, I got well-trained, biddable, wise campaigners who took very little of my personal time to have to train for the riding school, a bonus, since I was also teaching in the public school system full-time.

In Volume One, you met horses, which I DID have to work with.  However, by the time Benjamin came into my barn I had been teaching riding lessons for many years, and had students who had been with me for years. They were good riders whom I trusted to work with the newbies.  I got my horses worked for free, and they got all the riding time they wanted.  It was about always win-win.  And it was time to find a new horse to add, as I had lost two over the winter.

The ad read Large sorrel qtr. hrs. gldg. 15 yrs. Safe on trails.  $500.00 OBO. As I said, I often got free horses, but lately, the free offers all had some significant problems:  they were too young and untrained, too small – I had several ponies already, severe health issues – as in LAME, or simply too nuts for anyone  to ride. So, I called the number. The horse was in Norco, close enough, and the owner said she had been given the horse, but it was way too big for her kids to ride.  He was an aged, ex-sheriff’s posse horse, and she would be happy to see him get a good home.

I can see why she thought him too big. The lady whose ranch I finally found had about fifteen miniature horses of all ages and colors in two standard twenty-four foot by twenty-four foot corrals that shared an open connecting gate. A relatively huge, thin bright chestnut gelding with a flaxen mane and tail, and four dirty white socks unconcernedly meandered through them. He reminded me of Gulliver among the Lilliputians.  The glottal sound of Guh-lover could have been a portent!  Both horse and ponies were all in severe need of decent grooming and were looking hungry.  There was no tack that would fit him, so I put on his halter, jumped on his high-withered back, and guided him with the lead line.  With a bit of trepidation on both of our parts, the owner let me out the main gate, mentioning that no one had ridden the gelding since his owner left him off a couple months ago.  Well, I was impressed pretty quickly. 

This dark sorrel horse was the most obedient creature I have probably ever ridden. With just the lead line tied like reins to the halter, he whoa ed, did Western style roll-backs and, though completely responsive to my weight and legs, showed no inclination to take off, buck, or spook at all the sights along the path up and down the dirt road behind his barn - loose chickens, a gigantic bull that jumped up behind a flimsy wire fence and scared ME, and the minis, who went nuts when he left them. Mind you, I cantered maybe two steps on each lead, which he immediately picked up correctly, if stiffly – which I attributed to his overgrown, unshod feet. When I took him back to his corral, I pointed out that he needed shoeing badly and that it would take a lot of groceries to put weight on him, but I would forgo the vet check if I could have him for $350 (totally going against my own advice to people about first impressions)!  The owner didn’t argue at all, and I picked up Benjamin the next day.

I might have had a bit of misgiving about skipping the the vet-check as I headed for the ranch to get Benjamin, but he calmly walked into the trailer. I figured shoes would help the feet and that I had gotten a very good deal. When my students and I unloaded him at the riding school, the first thing he got was a good bath and grooming.  His copper coat gleamed, his mane was pulled, and the knots were combed out of his tail, which left it considerably shorter than it had been, as it was an unholy, gummy mess at first. We clipped his bridle path, long whiskers and now snowy white socks. He took all of this with grace and aplomb, not resisting in any way. He was quiet, alert, just wonderfully tractable.

We wormed him and fitted him with tack – he was the same size as my former great school horse, Rhiannon, who was no longer with us, and her saddle, bridle, blankets, and sheets were a perfect fit. Once in his corral, he was provided with all the alfalfa and molasses he wanted, as well as the pellets we fed all the horses. Whenever a horse seemed to be dropping weight, or arrived too skinny for my taste, I always free fed A&M until an improvement was seen. So, we hadn’t really worked him yet.

It was spring.  The days were gorgeous, students would soon be on Spring Break, and all the horses would get to go on trail rides and/or worked by horse-crazy students. I arranged to have our new horse shod right away.  My shoer noted there was a bit of arthritis present in the front fetlocks, and commented that the sorrel had been fifteen a LONG time ago! Well, he was still a good horse… It only took days for Benny to put on weight, and he began to glow.  Big Ben, or Benny, became his name, because we already had a school horse called Benjamin on the stable row. The original Benjamin was owned by a dear student, and I was allowed to use him as I saw fit in the school, but I didn’t want to change newest Benjamin’s name particularly, so Benny he became.  I tacked him up and took him down to the jump ring.  We finally got our first big canter.

I heard the most ungodly sound coming from my horse! The longer we cantered, the louder it got.  Imagine a loud, gasping, wheezing sound and you have the idea. Yet, it didn’t seem to affect his movement at all – he wasn’t coughing or gagging, really. Not to mention, Benny was pretty stiff at the canter – not lame, but jolting, no springiness at all.  I pulled to an immediate stop. As I did this, I noticed that the sound, which I thought was his breathing, stopped altogether. AND that his halt wasn’t as immediate as one might want, stiff joints or not. With the snaffle bit, I felt like I had VW braking on a Mack Truck. This horse really wanted to keep moving.  It was like he felt FREEEE and was loving it.  Again, he wasn’t disobedient, but I could feel him ready to respond at first request-a tightly wound rubber band ready to be let loose, but definitely at the rider’s discretion.  It was a thoughtful me that walked him up to the barn to change from a snaffle to a Kimberwicke Dring bit with a slight curb, which is what we rode him in thereafter. He respected that bit and it worked perfectly. The noise was a different matter.

I (unfortunately) knew what it was. I worked with a horse in my own young riding days that was a roarer. It is a fairly harmless condition.  For whatever reason, the three flaps of skin in the horse’s larynx, glottal area, whatever, don’t close all the way and air escapes hoarsely as the horse breathes, which makes for a most interesting sound. As long as the horse is walking, roaring usually isn’t a problem. But the faster one goes, or the harder the exercise, often, the louder the noise.  It isn’t dangerous to the horse, actually.  I suppose it could affect endurance and heavy duty, long distance performance, but that wasn’t something our school horses did.  However, they did jump at shows, and that might be a problem for Benny…

I digress. When I realized that Benny was a roarer, I called his former owner and basically (but politely) insisted that she give me the contact information of the previous owner. I can be persuasive and she reluctantly did so.  That person turned out to be a retired policeman who had used Benjamin as his mount for about fifteen years. And, yes, he was a roarer,