Still Here, Plus Some Wreck Stories

When life is unusually busy ... blogging suffers! I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off for weeks and weeks. Especially lately, blogging took a nosedive! But now, I think I have a bit of a breather, so will type something, whether it's interesting or not.


My husband is on a kick of wanting to ride a bull or a saddle bronc. When he was younger, he did, but note that the key word here is YOUNGER! There's a "bull riding event" happening locally in early June, and he keeps threatening to ride a bull. I hope it's just mid-life-crisis-wishful-thinking, but I threaten right back that if he pulls such a stunt, I WILL NOT BE THERE TO WATCH. All I can imagine is a wreck, resulting in a cast of some kind.


A friend of ours was relating to us yesterday how, here several weeks ago, he was moving cattle horseback, and when the cattle turned fast one way, and his horse followed suit, the horse got his feet hooked together with the shoes, and the horse FELL WITH HIM. As it was, it mainly just bruised his leg pretty badly. Thankfully his head missed a rock only a little ways away. Now I know why I pray for the safety of the people I know!


This story got me thinking of horse wrecks. I know that in working with animals, anything is possible, even when "tame" is the rule. I had Trigger for four years, and yes, we had our share of mishaps. Before I got him, I'd had a mishap with one of the neighbor's Shetland ponies. I was riding it bareback, when it suddenly bolted. I fell off, and put my arms out straight when I was heading for the ground. The result was a nicely jammed elbow and a trip to the ER for x-rays!


When I had Trigger, bolting was a normal thing. He was a good all-around riding horse, but had his moments. Rattly things would make him spook, such as bicycles, motorcycles, rattly trucks, roaring equipment, noisy windmills, you name it. It wasn't at all unusual to be out along a country road and have some unusually rattly thing go by, and I'd either have to ride a run-away, or get off and hold him as best as I could. Looking back, God HAD to have been watching over me in a special way, considering that horse! I'm thankful we got along as well as we did.


One wreck we had wasn't that big of a deal, and I even laughed. A neighbor boy and I were riding Trigger bareback, down a ditch with the road on one side, and a barbed wire fence on the other. Well, something happened and this kid stuck his feet in Trigger's flanks. I think this is the only time I knew Trigger to buck! But buck he did, and bucked both of us off right into that barbed wire fence! Just unloaded us, and we landed there. About as soon as we hit the ground, Trigger stopped bucking, and just stood there and looked back as if to say, "What are you doing down there?" I kind of thought it was funny, though I didn't like getting bucked off, and wished this kid had kept his feet out of Trigger's flanks. Thankfully we only got some small scratches. We got right back on and rode away down the ditch.


The one big "wreck" I remember involved something other than rattly things that spooked Trigger - a turned saddle. Now I wasn't so ignorant as to have a too-loose saddle on a horse. But when I first got Trigger, I didn't have a saddle yet, so I just rode bareback. Then after awhile, I borrowed a saddle from a friend's dad. The thing was, it was an antique. Literally. An oldie with wide swells in front, a high cantle in back, pointy skirts, and old-style stirrups. And a latigo that didn't have holes punched in it - it was just a solid strap. So, just being grateful to have a real saddle to ride with, I used this antique thing for quite awhile. Then one day .....


I had a couple of friends (sisters) in town who also had horses and liked to go riding. So the three of us would often go out and scour the roads and have fun being out with our horses. They also had a nice dog that went along. He did a good job of keeping all the other dogs at bay. So one day we were riding on a road amongst some houses in the neighborhood. All of a sudden .... my saddle turned. Evidently that plain, buckle-less latigo had loosened and off to the side it went! And I went with it. And Trigger threw a fit and spooked. I fell off. He took off running with the saddle UNDER him. My friends' dog started chasing him and barking. Trigger ran through a yard, circled, and came out again. He went in another yard. This second yard had a small pasture at the back near where the fiasco started. He went through that second yard, with the barking dog on his heels, and with the saddle still hooked to his underside, took a flying leap over the barbed wire fence into that pasture! Talk about top jumping form! He and the saddle both cleared that fence. I was frightened, mad and proud all at the same time. We finally got ahold of him in the pasture, and I got the saddle off of him. We walked the three blocks to the corral at home. The only "casualty" was a scratch on his front leg, which I cleaned and treated, and it was fine.


Somewhere along that route of disaster, though, the saddle had lost a stirrup. We tried to look for it, but never did find it. So we returned the antique saddle, minus one stirrup. I can picture someone in the years since then, in one of those yards, digging a garden or something, and finding this old, antique stirrup, minus the saddle. "Hmmm..... wonder where this came from?"


It wasn't long after that, that Dad came home one day with two used saddles for me to look at. One was $100, and one was $75. The $100 one was black leather, fancy-tooled, but kind of just dressy and showy. The $75 one, however, was a good, sturdy western saddle. It was plainer, but just what I wanted, and in good shape. So I went with that one, and never regretted it. It served me well the rest of my horse-owning days. And the latigo had holes to go with the cinch buckle. I eventually added a breast collar and back cinch, just to help keep things in place.


That was really the only big "wreck" we had, plus the normal, everyday spooking events.


Recently, though, I had a "wreck" that put that one to shame, at least in my mind. And it didn't involve a horse. It involved a steer. A big, black steer with a mission.


We were helping a friend work cattle --- me, my husband, and our two sons. It was a couple of years ago, and I was a mid-40's, out-of-shape, apartment-dwelling mom who hadn't been around big animals in ..... a very, VERY long time. But we were working calves - the normal stuff such as castrating, branding, shots, worming, ear-notching, ear tags, and such. As we finished with the calves, they went over through a gate into a nearby pen, where they were happy to just STAND THERE and be away from that awful working chute. Well, at one point, a pretty good-sized steer came through. He'd been mostly worked before, but something had been missed being done at that time, so they got him this time around. He got turned loose, and he went into the nearby pen, joining his smaller-sized buddies.


Not long after, our friend asked me to run over and shut the gate to that particular pen. So I left my various ear jobs, and trotted over to shut the gate. The calves were all just standing in a group in the middle of the pen. THEN .... just as I got in that no-man's land of that wide-open gate, here came that big black steer out of nowhere, and he was on a mission. He either wanted through that gate NOW, or to get me, or both. With no time to spare, my reflex was to wildly wave my armes and holler just as loud as I could. He was only a few feet away. I thought I saw him hesitate. The next thing I knew, I felt a "THUMP!" and went flying through the air. You know how a helicopter blade rotates? That's just what I did, landing belly-down in the dirt! I never even saw that steer come the rest of the way nor saw him hit me, it happened so fast.


So here came our friend .... "Are you O.K.? Can you get up? Can you get on the fence? I think he's coming back ..." I was moving about 1 mile an hour. Not really hurt, just dazed and in kind of a stupor. But I slowly ambled over to the fence, slowly got up high enough to avoid trouble, while the men got that mad steer back where he belonged. AND SHUT THE GATE. Whew. After I got my wits back, I went back to work on my particular end of the calf work, and we finished up. So I got initiated pretty thoroughly that day. Now, I've always had, and still do have, a DEEP appreciation of farmers, ranchers, producers, and the work they do with crops and livestock, feeding the world. But this day of working calves made that appreciation go up at least a thousand-fold.


Besides that, my husband almost got it from a bull that same day, but was thankfully able to climb a fence quickly, and only felt a gentle breeze as the bull blew by. Cattle work is not for the faint of heart! But the work is necessary, and I'm thankful for those who do this regularly as part of their life work. And especially when they can come out of it still in one piece at the end of the day.