When I was a kid, we had a paint horse we called Peppy. He was a half brother to both Kokomo and Apache, but he had inherited much more of the Shetland attitude than the other two. He was a naughty pony.
The prettiest horse on my parent’s ranch in Idaho is a 2 year old buckskin AQHA filly named Docs Honeycomb. She is the 2008 baby out of their big bay mare, Steel Hickory, by their buckskin stallion Docs Cold Cash.
I was visiting with my dad the other day about horse stories from my childhood. I don’t remember some of the earliest things of course, so my dad was filling me in on some history of horses I remembered but didn’t know a lot about. It is so interesting to hear another viewpoint on things that I only remember from a child’s point of view, and I love thinking back on those old days.
I went to the cattle auction last Saturday. This isn’t a quality auction, it’s a ramshackle type of barn in our podunk county where the local farmers hang out on the weekend to watch stuff sell. You’ll see everything go through the ring—chickens, eggs, piglets, goats, sheep, and occasionally a horse, before the cattle start to sell. I only went because my husband had heard the sale report the day before and they’d listed a kid broke pony as well as eight other horses.
My folks have a really nice Quarter Horse mare named Steel Hickory, whom they bought as a three year old and have gotten some of their best foals from. But for some reason, she hasn’t had a foal the last two years, and she has spent the whole time living fat and happy on their irrigated pastures.
I made myself a mecate the other night. No, it’s not some sort of South American recipe—it’s the rein and lead combination you see a lot of buckaroos and vaqueros use with a bosal or a regular bridle. The mecate dates back to the time of the Conquistadors, and is pronounced “may-kah’-tay”. They are commonly made from twisted or braided horsehair and cost a pretty penny.
We recently took a trip to Idaho to visit my folks. We got to ride horses, go on a cattle drive, take a lot of horse pictures, and enjoy the Idaho scenery while there. They were having beautiful fall weather and we really enjoyed our stay.
When I was sixteen, I wanted to learn to ride English. Growing up on a cattle ranch in the midwest was not condusive to getting a refined education in horseback riding. I learned the hard way—my sisters threw me up in the saddle and I did my best to stay on. But I did a lot of reading as a kid, and lived in a world of complete horse craziness, and in my Western-only world I felt there was a void.
