So Fall is Now Upon Us

Well, now it's fall and we did take a few little rides, but nothing spectacular and then winter hit and it was a cold one, so there was no riding throughout the winter. As soon as spring peeked it's nose out I was ready to ride!  With the two of them it was just too hard, so I basically just would ride, sometimes bareback from lot to lot as I grazed them.

One spring day in April, my feet hurt and I just didn't want to have to walk a crossed the road to move them so I talked Gracie into letting me jump on her back and bareback her to the gate.  Well, when we got there I had to jump off to open the gate.  I was hanging onto her mane, as I didn't have a halter on her, and when I slid down my hand got tangled in her mane and one finger didn't let go!  Yep, broke the hell outta it!  It'll never be the same, or work right.

Summer came and went, and it was either too hot or too wet to ride, but fall weather was beautiful so I decided I was going to definitely get some riding in before the snow started flying. I bought me a little leather bareback saddle, thinking that if I didn't have to go to all the trouble of saddling them up that maybe I'd be more inclined to ride more often.  I was going to just throw this on them, ride around the pasture a bit every day and get this down to a tee.  I went to the barn and saddled them both up and started working.  Two hours later I still hadn't managed to talk one of them into letting me get in the saddle.  The more I worked the more determined they were to keep me off their backs.  I gave up for the day, I went home and just wanted to cry.  The next day I talked my husband into going for a ride with me.  I just felt safer if someone was with me.  We saddled them up, and went about 5 blocks, Gracie fighting me every step.  I tried to get her away from Dixie just long enough to run around some trees and practice some reining, and she pulled against me until I was about to fall out of my saddle.  I told Vern, "let just go back to the barn, I just don't feel at all safe".    I finally came to the conclusion that I needed some help and if I didn't get it pretty quick, I'm going to get hurt.  I mean really hurt.  I put the horses away and went home and sent an email to Julia.

I found Julia Slater online advertised as a John Lyons certified trainer the year before.  In all my "studying" I decided I liked the way John Lyons worked with horses and did a little research to see if I could find a trainer in my area.  Julia is in southern Kansas, but that was about as close as I could get.  I had called Julia back then to see what it would cost to get her to come and do a clinic, but I wasn't able to get enough interest lined up for it.  While talking to her she told me about her online training and suggested I try that.  I balked at that suggestion because what I really felt I needed was some hands on training.  Now  I'm desperate so I'm willing to try just about anything. Together we decided we would try the online training and see how it goes.

I did my best to explain to Julia where I was with the horses, which was no where.  Gracie had eluded me in putting a halter on so many times that I had started letting her go without a halter and now she was impossible to catch.  Even with a handful of treats she would stay just far enough away that I couldn't catch her. If I did get a halter on her she would run over me.

Dixie would try to kick me for what seemed to me no apparent reason.  If I tried to get on her from the ground she would back up and not let me on.  If I tried from the mount she would refuse to bring her hind end to me so that I could reach her.  If I scolded her she would try to kick or bite me .  I was to the point of "FEAR" in getting to close to her. When I walked behind her I took a wide path!

Julia and I agreed that we needed to start from scratch.  The first thing to do was to try to get the halters on them.  No grain or treats unless they put their halters on first.  So here we go! Getting a halter on Dixie was no big deal.  She would back away from me but sometimes if I told her "whoa" she would stop.  Other times she would go out of the barn a ways and stop, and I could then walk up to her and put a halter on her with no trouble.  Getting Gracie was another story.  I learned that if I got Dixie first and walked her to the gate, Gracie would follow, and usually then would let me put a halter on her.  She would NEVER let me do it in or close to the barn. The first week that's what we did.  I would walk Dixie to the gate put the halter on Gracie, lead them both back to the barn and give them their grain.  HAHHA! That worked for awhile until Gracie figured out that if we went to the gate I was going to catch her, so now she would go to the gate with me and then turn around and run so the chase was on!  Now understand it's the first of January and it's dang cold out there and I'm really not wanting to spend an hour chasing this horse around in the snow.  But Julia said....no halter no grain.  I gotta tell ya there were some days that she just didn't get any grain.  Yet I made an effort everyday to give her the choice.  Soon enough I learned that if I could get her into the upper pasture, and work with Dixie for awhile, by the time I got done, she was ready to put her halter on.  That's what we did for the next two or so weeks.  Then I tried treats.  That was a joke at first.  I tried putting the bucket of grain down and when she got close enough would put the halter on her.  Worked once!  The next  three or four times I tried it she danced around me like an Indian going to a pow wow.  I was to the point of total frustration.  When I would finally catch her I was so mad I wanted to beat her!  However, I knew if I ever did that that she would never come to me.  I mean if someone caught me and then beat me I sure wouldn't be in any state of mind to let it happen again!.

Julia suggested that I make a place I could run her in and shut the gate, a place to catch her.  I didn't have what I needed to do that and with 10 inches of snow and ice on the ground, wasn't in the position that I could get anything rigged up. I did have some fairly long rope, so I thought maybe I could get her in the barn and run a rope a crossed the entrance to keep her in.  I was pretty proud of myself, hey that was easy enough.  So I get a hold of the halter and head for her and she turns around and starts for the entrance, stops and looks at the rope and then me like, "hey what's this?", drops her head and underneath the rope she goes, gives a little skip and kick and takes off across the lot mimicking  "Ha ha, you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!"

  I'm telling you you have to be smarter than the horse if you are going to win at this!

chance du vallon!!!

And After That

 I was only a couple of weeks into my horse ownership when I did something to my back.  I could hardly walk let alone think of riding. Then I had a little accident that ended in an ambulance ride to the hospital (no it wasn't the horses!) and a week stay, and a couple weeks recovery so we are well into the winter and I've still not had a good ride on my horses.  I had to have an MRI and some epidermal injections, which didn't work by the way, so there wasn't going to be any riding anytime soon as I had a couple of bulged discs in my lower back.  Round about February we finally got a little break in the weather and my husband felt sorry for me and we went on a little horsey ride around town.  All went pretty well, nothing major to tell about.  I went home and searched the internet for anything I could find about how to be a better rider!

Dixie starting to fatten up!

 As soon as spring hit, I was rearing to go! I had studied up!  I'm pretty sure I'm a pro by now, and I'll be doing some riding!  BUT! Dixie didn't fair to well through the winter.  Round about the end of February I thought she looked like she was losing weight.  I mentioned it to everyone that knew something about horses, and all of them told me that she was just old and sometimes they have trouble keeping weight on in the winter.  However one old farmer told me he thought it might be her teeth, and explained to me that the way they chew it can cause their teeth to get sharp and they need to see a dentist.  He told me where to take her.  I watched her for awhile, and worried over her until I finally convinced myself that there was something wrong and I was going to have to do something.  My husband and family just thought I worried over them too much, which I did, but I just didn't want to not take care of something because of my stupidity. So the end of March we borrowed a trailer and loaded them both up and took them to the vet and had their teeth floated, all their shots, wormer, and he put Dixie on special feed for her diet.  I came out of there about 500 dollars later! and I still had to get their feet trimmed. Now I'm starting to get a real dose of reality here where horse ownership is concerned and I haven't been on their backs twice up to this point.

Gracie Loves to Graze

 We had a really wet spring.  It rained and rained and rained, and there wasn't any riding going on, but with Dixie's state of health, I was a little concerned about riding her anyway.  As soon as we did get a fairly nice day, I saddled up Gracie and ponied Dixie and we went for a little mile or so walk.  We did that a few times, and then one day I decided I would just take Dixie out on her own. That didn't work so well.  I got about a quarter of a mile from the pasture and she backed me up into the ditch and stopped.  She wasn't going anywhere.  So I took her back to the barn and rode her around the pasture.  Then I went home and looked on the internet for any sort of training I could find, and studied, studied, studied.

Sammie loves to follow along!

One nice day I got Vern to go with me and we went for a nice long ride with them together.  We rode out about 3 miles and stopped at the cemetery to give the girls a little rest (and the boys who followed along behind us.)  As we were entering the gate, Gracie went down with me on her back.  I got off and just walked with her a bit, and she went down again.  I yelled at Vern to come quick.  He looked at her and said "aw she's alright!"  So we head back and about half way Gracie decides to just lay down.  I'm laughing and Vern's yelling "Get her up before she rolls on that saddle!"  We didn't go too much farther and she starts limping.  So I get off and walk her the rest of the way home.  I talk to my horse buddies about it and they tell me that sometimes a horse will do that just so you won't ride them.  So now I'm thinking I've got a clown on my hands. But the next time we go out, she starts it again, and again I end up walking her home.

Within a few days it was evident that there was something wrong with her front foot.  The poor girl could hardly walk.  So I get ahold of my horse buddy, John, and he  looks at her and tells me she's got thrush!  Oh great, what in the world is that!  So I go home and search the internet and study all about the feet and how to deal with thrush.  I went to the vet and got the medicine and John came over twice a day and helped me doctor her  foot.  Now.. some one had warned me about leaving a halter on the horses in the pasture, and I knew better, but since we were having to catch her twice a day to dope her feet, this one day I decided I would just leave the halter on during the day and take it off after her next treatment. We treated her about 7 that morning.  Around ten my mom calls and tells me that Dixie was just throwing a fit down by the barn, so she went down  to see what was going on and found Gracie had gotten her halter caught on the manure spreader.  Mom managed to get a board and pry her loose, but said that she had cut herself up pretty bad on one foot.  My heart sank!  It was my fault!  I knew better, but I was just trying to make life easier for myself.  I almost killed my horse and my mom at the same time!

Moses Gets So Tired
But Won't Be Left Behind

I hurried up to the barn to check out the situation. She was bleeding pretty bad on her already sore foot, and I had no clue as to what to do for her!  I went home and called the vet and in tears told him of my dilemma. He told me what medicine I would need and how to treat the wound, and assured me that these things happen that she would be fine. Two hundred dollars worth of medicine later and two weeks of apologies to Gracie, and she healed up just fine, AND I have never left them with their halters in the pasture again!

I doctored Gracie all summer but her foot never did get well enough for us to get any riding in.  In the mean time I watched every video on http://youtube.com that had something to do with horses, and I moved them from lot to lot and sit with them while they grazed.  I checked out books from the library and printed out instructions and took them to the barn with me and tried to work the horses according to direction. I had this idea that even if I couldn't ride them I could enjoy my time with them.

GIMME! GIMME!

 The girls got to the point that they would meet me at the gate when they saw me coming.  I always took a pocket full of apples, carrots, cookies or something for them and they knew it.  They would just about run over me trying to get them. Everyday I would put their halters on and take them out to the ditch to graze or to another patch. Occasionally Gracie would have a mood and decide she didn't want to wear a halter.   I knew that as long as I had Dixie on a lead, Gracie wouldn't go too far, so I started letting her out without a halter and she would follow Dixie and I where ever we went.  I thought this was "cute". I had no idea that I was creating a MONSTER!

I took a few weeks off and I went to visit my son in Tulsa, and then went to Missouri to visit my sister for a few weeks.  While I was there I fell and sprained my ankle super bad and was put into a boot for 6 weeks. Meanwhile... back at the ranch, it turns out that Gracie had an abscessed foot.  The farrier doctored it and by the time I got home and healed enough to ride, she was also well mended.  I was ready to RIDE! So this nice fall afternoon I'm up at barn and thought I'd just take Gracie for a little bareback around the grounds!  So I get me a bucket, and commence to crawl onto it to get onto the horse, and as soon as I got up on the bucket, Gracie backs up, knocks the bucket out from under me and down I went on my OUUUCCCHHH SORE ankle.  So it was back in the boot for another month meanwhile I searched the internet and studied and studied and studied, but I'm starting to think seriously that I need some hands on training as I'm starting to beleive I don't have a clue as to what I am doing with these two girls!.

So Now What Do I Do?

Well, it sure didn't take me very long to figure out I didn't know anything about taking care of a horse.  First of all, in my excitement of the moment it never occured to me to make sure I had some good fences before I brought them home.  The upper pasture was pretty good so I put them in there for now, and had to sweet talk my husband into fixing me some fence.  Henry had sent me home a little bag of feed, the halters, lead ropes, saddles, blankets, bridles, and fly spray,  and I had about a hundred bales of hay in the barn.  It's the end of October, so we are just now heading into winter. Mom had a couple of curry combs and as the horses were pasture horses at my brothers, they came to me with their tails and manes matted with stickers so I spent the first day with them just grooming.  Boy they are looking good.

Gracie Myself Dixie
2008 October

Ok now the next day I'm going to go for a ride, but I can't find anyone to go with me, and we already know that Gracie can't be left alone.  Well, I decided I would ride Dixie and pony Gracie behind.  That would be easy enough and we'd all get a little exercise.  I got the bridle on her with no major problem, but when it came to the saddle I couldn't remember how Mom had told me to fasten the strap.  Oh Crap!  So I lead the two horses down to Mom's two blocks, stopping every ten steps or so to move the saddle back up on Dixie's back.  It's hot, I'm flustered, and already about worn out when I get to Mom's front door, and now where am I going to tie them up so I can go get Mom to help me.  Thankfully Mom's dogs raised cain over the horses being in the front yard and she came out to investigate, only to find me standing there like a fool with two horses.  She helped me rig up the saddle, but I couldn't pull it tight enough that everytime I would try to get on it would slide off.  So, I walked the horses back to the barn, put the saddle away, took off the bridle, gave them a brushin, and called it a day.

I went  home and start looking up info on the internet.  I watched every video they put out there, read every blog, horse magazine, expert advice I could find.  It might not be tomorrow, but I'm going to figure out how to do this and I'm going to ride those horses!

Where it All Began

Myself with my baby brother Henry
1959

My early years were formed along the dirt roads of Kansas.  That little farm gave my siblings and I a solid start.  We loved the farm, of course we knew no different, but country living was good to us. I was about 5 when my daddy came home from the sale one night and warned us of a surprise that he would bring home the following night!  I remember my older sister and brother and I waiting anxiously for him in the yard that next evening.  It was almost dark, the sun was just starting to go down, when daddy drove into the yard with his pick up,  the stock racks rattling with every bump. Through the gaps in the wooden racks, LO and Behold!! we could see not one, but TWO white and red paint horses! I was in love instantly, as were my sister and brother.  You see, I was born a cowgirl.  Proof you will see from pictures of me as a youngster.  Not a one will you find that I am not sporting my cowboy boots 'neath my little short skirt. I never grew out of it either, cowboy hats, belt buckles, wranglers, and boots. 

Myself and my baby sister Angelia
1960

Well, there was a little problem we had with these horses.  They weren't broke.  But Daddy was pretty sure he could do it.  His brother, CW Pierce aka Uncle Cliff,  was one of the best horse trainers around, and with a little help he'd have us riding these horses in no time.  Mom and Dad worked with them.  They got them to the point that a person could sit on them for a bit.  Then one night while momma was in the barn milking, my brother, Jeff, was sitting on one of them and Charline and I were petting and loving on it, and the thing spooked, reared up, knocked Jeff off and come down and kicked Charline in the eye.  Oh she had a shiner let me tell you.  So the horses got put out to pasture and we were to stay away from them,  and that was pretty much the end of that.  We moved to town a couple of years after that, meanwhile the buckinest thing we got to ride was a hog now and then. After we moved to town Daddy would still bribe us to be good or to go to bed with the promise of a pony.  I never got one, but I dreamed of it.  Ya see, I thought back then I was going to be a writer, and I wrote short stories to beat the band and I don't think one of them didn't include a lonely girl and her pony exploring the world together.  I had friends that had them, and I would take every opportunity to jump up on any  one that came near.  When I was a sophomore in high school, I met my first husband, and lucky for me, his family had a horse, and no one ever rode her.  Well, no one til me.  Now and then Jack would jump on, but it wasn't a priority as he was a motorcyle man. I loved taking Ginger for rides.  We'd run in the pasture with the cows, or sometimes Jack would ride her into town and we'd go from there. I'd ride just as fast as we could go one mile and turn around and go as fast as I could the next.  I loved to go fast!  I'll say I was lucky, because I was never thrown off one. 

Ginger would spook when she had to go over a railroad track, but somehow we always got through it. I guess I just knew she would spook, and I watched for it, and we got through it together. One time we were riding up by the city pool, and something scared her.  I still don't know what it was, but she went to bucking and a dancin and Jack slid off her back end, and I just hung on tight and went for a ride with him running along behind me yelling, " Get off of her! Get off of her!"  Well, first of all Ginger was a good sized horse.  No way could I get off of her without getting hurt somehow while she was a jumping and a kickin! and a runnin as fast as she could go. Seemed to me my best option was to hang on and stay on! So I rode her through it laughing my ass off at Jack's jumping up and down yellin'.  Ah yeah Ginger, she was a good horse.  Jack's dad sold her not too long after that, but I had a good year or so with her.

After Jack and I got married, and had our babies, we moved to Colorado.  We would put the cowboy boots on the little boys, get a sitter for Chrisinthia, and go to the mountains and rent horses to ride on the mountain trails. Stevan was barely 2.  His cowboy boots were too big, and every now and then one would fall off and Jack would have to dismount and pick up his boot. He got down off his horse, picked up the boot and turned around just in time to see his horse take off on a dead run! That's the last time I remember Jack riding a horse!  LOL

Well then, life happens.  I never was in position to own a horse, but we rented them now and then, the kids and I, and I saw to it that my daughter got to have a few riding lessons when she wanted to learn, and both of the boys participated in rodeo in high school.  So, I retired from my job in Oregon in 2000, and married the next prince charming that comes along and after a short stay in Washington State, we left it all and moved back to Kansas.  It didn't take me long after we got here to start worrying my husband about getting a horse.  I started looking, I was going to have one that's all there was to it. I never stopped talking about it. One Sunday afternoon, my little brother and his wife stop for a visit and I start in about finding me a horse.  Henry laughed and he said he had two of them he'd give to me.  Well then I'd need a saddle and all the tack and I'm a poor girl with not money.  He said he had everything I needed except the desire to ride.  I said I'd take them.  My husband said I wouldn't.  Henry and Kim left laughing all the way to the truck, and I heard him say " He's not going to let her have them!"

The next weekend, I talked my nephew into finding me a stock trailer to borrow, and we made tracks to my brother's and brought back my first two horses!  Dixie and Gracie. My mom had a little bit of ground, and she said I could keep them there.  Now, I had no clue as to what I was getting into.  I couldn't wait to get them saddled up and take them for a ride.  Hell,  couldn't even put a saddle or a bridle on the dang thing. And did I forget to mention that these horses hadn't even been riden in 2 maybe 3 years.  Mom helped saddle Dixie up and get her ready to go.  I was just going to take her for a little ride, and leave Gracie tied to a post until I got back.  So, we are about 6 blocks away from the lot, on mainstreet in downtown Narka, Kansas, and I get off my horse to go show my husban  "MY NEW HORSE" that he said I couldn't have, when behind me I hear this horse let out a war whoop that nearly scared me to everlasting life! I whirled around and what do I see but GRACIE running towards me full speed down the gravel road dragging and tripping over her lead rope!  Who woulda thought! And so begins my journey to horse ownership.