Old Horse Tales

On the Way Home

by Tom Woodard

When I was about 12 or 13, my father bought two mares. The first was a medium build red mare with black mane and tail, named Bess, and the second a big black mare named Nellie. After several years, and after my sisters ceased to show any interest in the horses, Dad sold Nellie, but I kept ol' Bess for several more years, pasturing her with cows in a huge pasture across the highway from McShan Lake. Both while I was in high school and later, when in college at the University of Alabama, on rare occasions I would go down to the pasture, catch up ol' Bess, and we'd go riding. Bess was stubborn as a mule (a close relative), and if a novice rider got on her they were very likely to get hurt! She was hard-headed!

There was a particular circuit I'd ride, which was mostly along country gravel roads, sixteen miles long. Along that circuit was an old, abandoned farm house, and I noticed that from the beginning of our rides until we reached that farm house, I would have to keep Bess kicked up just to get her to keep moving forward, at a slow and unwilling walk, but once we reached that old house, and for the rest of the way, I would have to pull back hard on the reins to keep her from breaking into a trot, or even a gallop. Finally, after many such episodes, I drove that circuit in a car, measuring on the odometer the exact distance from home to that old house, and from there on back home. As I said, the circuit was sixteen miles and (have you guessed it?) that old farm house was exactly eight miles from home, either way! Ol' Bess knew where she was and she knew when she was going home!

Dad sold Bess while I was in college. She was sixteen when he sold her, but still had a lot of spirit and fire. She has long since passed away, but I will never forget her.

Sleepy Nellie

Nellie, the big black, was the exact opposite of Bess. Believe it or not, she was so laid back she would go to sleep on a trail ride! One day my Dad was riding her, with one of my sisters on Bess, and she fell asleep walking down a hard-baked gravel road on a hot, dusty August day. Suddenly, while asleep, she stumbled to her knees and my Dad did a complete flip in the air and two or three more on that hard gravel road. Dad had a temper, and normally he would have been ready to kill poor Nellie, but when he rose up and looked back, she was still on her knees, confused and shaking. Dad felt so much pity for her in that state that he never thought about getting mad, but instead struggled to his feet and painfully went back and comforted her! Needless to say, he could hardly move for the next few weeks, such were the pulled and bruised muscles all over his body. That gravel did a pretty good job of scraping him up, too!

Whipped by a horse!

After my father sold ol' Bess, I still had a fine western saddle, but no horse. A good friend of mine was given a horse, a big white, by his grandfather, but he had no saddle. He wanted me to bring the saddle down to his daddy's farm, near Pickensville, so we could ride his new horse. Well, we saddled the fellow up and my friend got on board and tried to get the horse to go, but he would only go backwards. The horse was pretty insistant about only going in reverse, and after a little while his antics got the better of my friend, who became frightened of this ornery cuss and got off. Well, having ridden a hard-headed horse for many years, I figured I could get him to behave. I got on and I tried and I tried to get him to go forward, but never could. The harder and the longer I tried, the more violent that horse became. I will tell you frankly that I was scared I was about to get seriously injured, but I'm as hard-headed as a brick and I wasn't about to let that horse get the better of me. He and I went 'round and 'round, always in reverse, neither of us being willing to relent. Finally, that horse sat down on his haunches, like a dog, and just sat there. That's when I knew I'd been whipped by a horse!

Try sitting on a sitting horse, friends! I'm here to tell you it can't be done, at least not for long. . . . . . My friend got rid of that horse, and I've wondered ever since if anyone ever found his forward gears!

One last run

My younger daughter, as a child and a teenager, raced barrel horses. Her last barrel horse was named Gator, and when we first laid eyes on him, in the dead of winter, with his long, shaggy, brownish-black winter coat on him, I immediately thought of him as an old war horse, the veteran of many a calvary charge! Gator was born and raised in the Dakotas, and so Gator tended to grow a winter coat much longer and thicker than did Southern born horses. Gator was a big horse, and had incredibly large feet (He once stepped on my foot, as I stood beside him, and his hoof went completely around the toe of my size 11 boot, such that he didn't even touch or hurt me).

My daughter rode him that first day, and she immediately loved his power and the way he handled, so we bought him on the spot. The seller agreed to deliver him to us, but did not do so for several weeks, and when she did finally deliver him, she had doped him up on painkillers. When those painkillers wore off, he couldn't put his left rear foot on the ground at all, such was the pain. Between the time we bought him and the time he was brought to us, he had suffered a broken leg, which the seller had obviously attempted to conceal from us. I wanted to return him and demand a refund of the purchase price, but my daughter, who has a great compassion for animals, didn't want to do that, and I relented. We entrusted him to Dr. Jamie St. John, in Tuscaloosa, and, after many weeks of boarding and medical attention, he came home to us. It didn't take long to find out that Gator still had a lot of fire and spirit left in him, and he turned out to be a fine barrel racer, in spite of his age (he was in his teens at the time). He turned in many a great performance for us at horse shows, and we were all very happy with him.

Somehow, I felt a special affinity for ol' Gator. He was different than most horses somehow, and I think it was his unique personality which most attracted me to him. Another thing unusual about Gator was that unlike most all horses, he not only didn't mind his ears being touched, but actually liked to have his ears scratched, like a dog. I always tried to oblige him when I had the time, as I could tell how he appreciated it.

Now to the story: Gator had a great year at the local shows his last year of racing, but was often bested by one horse which was generally viewed as the best, most "automatic" barrel horse in our association. At the last show of the season, in Sokol Park arena, Gator ran the most magnificent race of his life, so spectacular that it virtually caught our breaths away. My heart races even today when I recall that night. He bested the whole field, including that other great horse, going away! Wow! What a run it was! My daughter, atop his back, rode out of that arena whooping, and we were all hollering and celebrating such as we never had before!

Shortly after, the second barrel racing event of the evening came up and my daughter prepared to charge into the arena on Gator once more, hoping for a similarly spectacular run, but it was not to be. Old Gator wouldn't go in, and wouldn't run. He never ran again. Gator had RETIRED!!! Somehow I think he knew he was going to retire even before he ran that last great run around the barrels, and so put his all into that last race, to leave as a testimony of what he had in his heart and his soul. But then he retired, on his own, and raced no more.

There is, to me, a great lesson in this for all of us. We need to be able to recognize it, when the time comes for us to "hang it up" and race no more, and to walk away with dignity, and with the knowledge of a race well run through life, just as Gator did. Paul speaks of this in his New Testament writings - of having run the race to the best of his ability, of having fought the good fight, and having the satisfaction of having done so to the best of his ability, with the help of and by the grace of God. I will never forget Gator's example in this regard, and hope that I can go out in similar fashion, know when to retire from the race of life, and do it with the dignity and style he displayed.

Gator passed away several years ago, from a sudden and massive heart attack, but that wonderful night will live with me always.

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