My son eventually left horses to
pursue his loves of soccer, cars, and computers, but still had
a bit of “show off the horse stuff” in him. The school horses
slept in the indoor arena, and he would
take his friends out to the barn, wake Charlie up, play Roy Rogers by
leaping onto Charlie’s back over his
ample rump, no halter or lead rope required.
We were mighty poor when Charlie came into our lives and we had no
money for a tractor or drag
to keep the dirt in the arena leveled. We created a drag by
folding bunch of non-climb fencing over and over.
I’d seen an article about ground driving a horse with the lines through
the stirrups, so why not use ropes
attached to the saddle horn, run through the stirrups, and then to the
drag?
My friend sat on the drag to make it heavy enough to function, and I
led Charlie around the arena.
This could have gone wrong in so many ways, but Charlie took it all in
good stride, and we got that arena drug.
You could guide Charlie with a string around his nose unless he felt
that he had been used badly,
and then his mouth was like a bar of iron.
He could do a western riding pattern, patiently waiting to be cued for
every lead change
even though he must have done the pattern hundreds of times.
If a young rider forgot to ask him to change leads, he changed on his
own when he was turned for the next cone.
It did make him difficult to cue for a counter canter because if the
rider were not totally definite
about holding him on that wrong lead, he just figured the rider
was mistaken and quietly went about
fixing the problem. The old man did prefer drop step changes, but
they were so smooth that 90%
of folks never realized they were not flying changes.
|
 |
