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When my family started ranching, I
was 12 years old. We had a small place and a couple horses
before that, but when I was in 6th grade my dad started buying a
ranch, and some cattle—and we got more horses. Ginger, a sorrel
yearling filly of mixed breeding, came with the ranch. She was
an orphan, raised on a bottle—a complete pet. We bought a brown
Thoroughbred filly named Nellace from an old rancher who raised
good horses. The next year
I joined a 4-H club that was just starting—the first 4-H horse
club in Idaho—and used Ginger as my 4-H project. She was gentle,
though stubborn, and pretty safe for a greenhorn like me to
train. Nell hadn’t been handled much and was nervous and
skittish so my dad sent her to be “started” by a horse breaker
he knew. Dad and I were both inexperienced in horse training.
His experience had been with teams of work horses he drove as a
boy on his parents’ farm, and I’d learned to ride on my own by
trial and error and reading everything horse-related that I
could get my hands on.
The man who “broke” Nell was not
a trainer in the true sense of the word. Some horses can be
treated the rough-handed way he rode Nell, and maybe turn out
ok, but not her. She came back “broke” to ride but scared, sulky
and resentful of humans. Dad rode her with caution. My uncle
rode her and got bucked off.
She was very sensitive and proud,
with a lot of heart and spirit. If someone abused her, she
fought back. Her basic disposition had been friendly, alert,
inquisitive—but her bad start with the rodeo cowboy got her off
on the wrong foot with humans. She was intelligent, fast, agile,
and quick as a cat. You had to be a very good rider just to stay
topside when she was working cows or spooking at something; she
could be clear across the road and heading the opposite
direction in the blink of an eye.
Yet she was very cool-headed for
a Thoroughbred. Her sire, Cheyenne Chief, was too. He was a
Cavalry remount stallion, and the rancher who had him always ran
him in the races at the county fair (winning them, usually) and
would then turn right around and use Chief as a pickup horse in
the rodeo arena. It takes a calm, sane horse to do that. Nell
came by her speed honestly, too. Chief’s sire, Pillary, won the
Belmont Stakes and the Preakness in 1922 and was the top money
winning Thoroughbred that year.
During my second year in 4-H, my
younger brother joined the club and needed a horse to ride. Dad
talked me into taking Nell for my project and letting Rocky have
Ginger. I was reluctant, because I was afraid of Nell, but
finally agreed. She was 3 years old then, still sulky, still
carrying her fierce resentment. She was hard to catch, and
kicked me on the leg one time when I tried to corner her in our
corral. She tolerated me sometimes and other times she’d
outright let me know that she’d rather I just leave her alone.
Once I tried to stroke her on the neck after I caught her and
she nipped me on the cheek. That really hurt my feelings because
I just wanted to be friends with her.
My brother Rocky and I rode range
nearly every day to check our cattle, and we also rode to town
twice a week that summer to 4-H meetings at the fairgrounds. It
was a 28 mile round trip to town. Nell usually settled down to
business after about the first 8 miles, but was often sulky or
skittish when starting a ride.
The first few times I rode her
that spring, we had some arguments in the barnyard before we got
going, but by then I was a good enough rider to stick with her
when she was skittish and I could keep her from bucking. But she
went over backward with me twice that spring during those early
arguments in the barnyard. Somehow I managed to jump clear. The
second time she did it, she just lay in the road sulking, and my
dad had to whip her to make her get up. Mom was worried and
didn’t want me to ride that mare again, but I swallowed my fear
and got back on. As summer passed, we cautiously felt each other
out and got along a little better.
Nell was a lot of horse, and kept
me constantly on my toes. Riding her did more than anything else
to make me a good rider and to learn to respect and be sensitive
to my horse. I treated her decently and she began to respond. We
made some very long rides and some tough ones in steep country,
riding range and moving cattle all day, but I never abused her.
I lost my fear and gained a deep and lasting respect for her
ability and judgment. She had a wonderful agility in handling
herself in rough country; she never once stumbled or fell with
me, in all the years of hard riding. I learned to trust her
judgment in choosing the best way to go through precarious
footing even at top speed, and her ability to outrun and
outmaneuver any other critter on four legs. I marveled at her
courage and stamina.
We went through a lot together
and she began to accept me. We became a team. This means so
much. When a horse gives you everything she’s got, doing a hard
job, all you can do is humbly appreciate it and be grateful.
This didn’t happen overnight, however. Her acceptance of me and
willingness to work her heart out for me was a gradual thing
that took several years. How happy I was when she finally
tolerated me enough to let me catch her. She still didn’t come
up to me like the other horses did, but she’d stand and let me
walk up to her, no longer trying to avoid me.
She was my 4-H project from 8th
grade all through high school and we did very well at the county
fair and all the open horse show classes. Our teamwork paid off
and we usually placed in everything we entered. Our first
bareback class was a spur-of-the-moment thing; I’d never ridden
her bareback. I’d been afraid to, because she was so quick and
catty. But we entered, and came out with the blue ribbon.
We developed a bond that words
can’t describe, and those of you who have been privileged to
ride a really good horse know what I mean. But the thing that
truly cemented that bond between us occurred in 1960 when she
got injured. Nell was 7 years old and carrying her first foal.
We’d bred her to my 4-H leader’s Arabian stallion—a versatile
little horse that packed deer during hunting season, worked
cattle, and held calves all by himself after they were roped off
him for branding. The foal was to be my next 4-H project.
In March, Nell jumped a
barbed-wire fence and somehow ended up cutting her left front
foot just above the hoof. It was a deep cut and I treated it
every day after school for many weeks. She had the foal in May—a
nice colt—but we lost him at a month of age from complications
following an accident. I stayed up all night in the corral with
him and Nell, but the little fellow grew weaker. At 4 a.m. I
woke my brother and he rushed off to town in the jeep to call
the vet (since we didn’t have a telephone at the ranch at that
time), but little Amahl died in my arms before the vet could get
there. Poor Nell stood over us, worried about her baby. After he
died and she nuzzled the body, she knew that wasn’t her baby
anymore. She wandered around the corral and whinnied a couple of
times, making a sound I’d never heard before, and it tore my
heart out. Horses truly do grieve. Then she came back to me and
nudged me with her head.
Her injured foot was still
mending. The wound had developed proud flesh and I treated it
twice a day—a challenging ordeal. Back then we didn’t know about
better ways to prevent and treat proud flesh and the traditional
treatments were harsh; scrub and pick off the scabs and apply a
caustic agent to eat away the over-growing tissue. I spent hours
doctoring that mare, and through it all came a bond of trust and
respect that was deeper than I’ve ever had with any other horse.
Nell taught me patience and
feeling. If I was in a hurry or frustrated because of her
nervous avoidance of the hurtful medication, she wouldn’t let me
handle the foot at all. At first, with my dad helping me, we
tried various methods of restraint. There were ropes and harsh
words and exasperated failures. But by mid-summer I was treating
her without any fuss. I had to forget the attempts at restraint,
forget my fear of her stomping or kicking. I had to just calmly
get right down under her feet and trust her—and she finally came
to trust me. From that point on I could walk up to her anywhere
in the pasture and work on that foot, and she’d stand there
quietly and let me do it. And the foot was looking better; we
were making progress.
That summer some of us in the 4-H
club were studying dressage. We borrowed flat saddles and
learned to ride English. I rode one of the club leader’s horses
all summer in class, but had my heart set on using Nell for the
final test at the fair in the fall. It was late summer when I
finally began riding her again, after she was no longer lame on
that foot. I rode her only for short periods of time because she
was out of shape and her injured tendon was badly shortened. I
was still treating the foot daily. We gradually built up its
strength, riding 10 minutes at first, then 20, then 30,
stretching the lame tendon, going through the dressage pattern.
She learned the movements
quickly. We did in 2 ½ weeks what our class had been teaching
their horses all summer, and made it to the fair—placing second
in the final test. We entered a few open classes, too, and
placed, even though Nell still didn’t want to take her left
lead. This should have been the happy ending, but it wasn’t.
By late fall I stopped treating
the foot. The proud flesh was reduced to a small line of scar
tissue and I was going to let it finish healing that way,
putting a little ointment on it now and then to keep it soft.
Nell was up in our main big field with the rest of the horses by
then, for winter pasture. I was only checking on her every 2 or
3 days.
A few weeks after the fair I
hiked up there to put a little more ointment on her foot, but
Nell wasn’t with the other horses. I looked and looked for her,
and finally saw her up on the ridge—outside our fence. My heart
sank. She wouldn’t be all by herself like that unless something
was dreadfully wrong, and I was already guessing. I had a halter
with me, so I put it on Ginger and rode her bareback up the
steep hill, trying to keep from sliding off as she lunged up the
slope.
Nell was cut up again, both front
feet this time. She’d taken out about 30 yards of fence in her
struggles. The old posts were broken off and the whole fence had
been dragged down the hill from where it had originally stood.
Nell had been there a long time. The blood was dried and her
front legs so swollen and stiff she could hardly move.
She was SO glad to see me, so
forlorn and hurt. After the ordeal we’d just been through to
heal her earlier wound, it almost broke my heart. I sent Ginger
back down the hill and put the halter on Nell. I gently coaxed
her across the strands of barbed wire on the ground and it took
more than an hour to lead her down off the hill, one careful
step at a time. Every step she took was torture. She tried so
hard to move, but the pain made her tremble and she tried to
carry most of her weight on her hind legs—which is very
difficult while going downhill.
We finally made it down to the
field and shuffled painfully to the creek and across it. It was
almost dark when I got her down to the barnyard. I treated her
wounds with what I had on hand, then drove to town for more
medication. As I left her, she called out to me—that same
unearthly lonely sound she’d made when Amahl died and when I
came to get her up on that ridge. It gave me such a horribly
helpless feeling to have her looking so trustingly to me for
help when there was nothing more I could do to ease her pain.
Thus began another 6 months of
doctoring, only this time it was harder because it was both
front legs, and it was winter. For the first 3 weeks we didn’t
know if Nell would survive. She wouldn’t put much weight on
those legs and spent so much time lying down that we worried she
might give up or get pneumonia. I carried feed and water to her,
but most of it sat untouched as she grew thinner. She didn’t
seem to care.
Finally she slowly began to
improve, and spent more time standing up. I treated her wounds
twice a day all winter. By spring she was healing nicely and I
began to ride her a little every day to give her the exercise
she needed to strengthen and lengthen the injured tendons and to
reduce the swelling in her front legs. From that point on, the
sheath around the flexor tendon in each front leg would swell if
she didn’t get enough exercise.
The years flew by and Nell
continued to be a great cowhorse. The scars remained on her
front feet, but once she got back in shape, she was able to
handle the cattle work in tough terrain just like she always
did. She had several more foals, two fillies and two colts. The
filly she had in 1962 (Nikki) grew up to be the best cowhorse I
ever had, sired by that same little Arab stallion. Nell finally
retired from hard ranch work in her mid 20’s and died peacefully
and suddenly, perhaps from a heart attack, a few years later.
There was something very special
between her and me, something I never really gained with any
other horse. I’ve had a lot of good horses over the years, but
the bond of trust I had with Nell meant more—perhaps because her
confidence was so hard to win. My other horses have meant a lot,
too, but in a different way. The ones I raised myself, I had
their confidence from the beginning. The bond of understanding
between Nell and me—which grew out of so much heartache, tears
and hard work when I was a girl, has never been equaled.
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