On a recent visit to my family home in the USA, I came across some old photos of our long gone family horses. I thought folks might be interested in the stories of those horses. So here is the second of three stories about some of the horses of my youth.

On our excursions through the local forest, me on the pony, and my dad hiking along side, he sometimes mentioned that it would be good to have a horse to ride along together. Then one Mother’s Day, he brought home a horse. He told Mom it was her Mother’s Day present. As far as I know, my mom never rode that horse, or any other horse. But we always called Lady our mom’s horse.

Lady was 2 years old, and green broke. She was a ranch bred, grade mare from Texas. The owner of the local riding stable often brought truckloads of horses like that back to Virginia from his business trips to Texas. Lady was one of those horses.

Lady was a well built reddish brown horse called a sorrel. Her distinguishing features were her blue eyes, and the white face, called a “bald face” by horse people. She was what the old timers called “thin skinned”. Some called her a “woman’s horse”. She needed a light touch, and did not work well with rough handling. She is probably the horse that gave me the ability to start light, and work up only as needed.

I taught her to neck rein, and to start, stop, and change gaits on voice command with as little visible movement from me as possible. On thinking back on it, I’m fairly certain that, rather than the words, Lady was reading the slight changes in my position as I prepared for the change of gait and such.

Her first job was to carry Dad as he accompanied one or another of us kids on our rides. After that, first me, then my youngest sister would ride her.

Once we were involved in the 4-H horse club, Lady became my western pleasure show horse. When I worked for the riding stable, I sometimes used her to gather horses for the hack line from the big pastures behind the barn. The barn owner chewed me out for using my good horse for the potentially dangerous job, rather than the cheap hack horses we always kept close by in a pen. But the hack horses just couldn’t compare to the “cow sense” Lady showed during these round ups. Lady could sense when one of the horses was about to break away, and always got in position to push the horse back to the group.

My 18th summer was the last year I was eligible for 4-H competition. That year, Lady and I won our regional championship, and placed in the top 10 in state competition. I joined the military and moved out shortly after that.

My youngest sister continued to ride Lady until she left for college. Lady was the last of our herd to be sold off after we all grew up and left.

Some footnotes:

Lady has been the only horse so far that I have ridden nearly every day for several years running. It’s possible that I turned her into a “one man horse”. She did everything I ever asked of her. There were of course some glitches, but these were recognized as things to pay more attention to in training. I trusted the horse with my life. However, my little sister once told me that Lady was “the spookiest horse she had ever ridden. The horse did have “glass eyes”, those blue eyes often seen on pintos. It’s possible that, as she aged, she developed vision problems.

In the autumn of 2004, I drove to South Dakota to participate in a portion of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial. It had been over 25 years since I’d last ridden Lady. I’d had many adventures with many different horses since then. I drove through undulating grasslands, sighting antelope, cattle, and the occasional horse. I checked in to a hotel the night before meeting the Lewis and Clark folks. I had a steak and beer at a local restaurant before retiring back to the hotel. That night, I dreamed that I was riding a big red, bald faced horse through all that beautiful open country I had just passed through.