The Naive, The Young, and Horses Often Become Confused

A Friend And Customer, Irish Legend, Eddie Macken

A customer had a problem with a six year old warm blood jumper: the horse had been castrated a few months earlier and his behavior was deteriorating rather than improving. He was pulling back and breaking the strongest rigging they could put on him, in other words he was refusing to tie and if his behavior wasn’t modified, he was going to kill someone or he would kill himself when he throws himself backward and flips over. Horses can be like people, they can get on a tangent with strange ideas in their head and really mess up a program.

A horse that won’t tie to a fence, a well, a tree, or a post is a liability to his rider and to himself; actually, he is a dangerous liability.

This particular horse is 16.3 hands and weighs just shy of 1400 pounds; he is young, strong, athletic, and can move at what seems to be the speed of light and this is too dangerous to be around, being caught flat footed around this horse will mean being crushed (literally) or killed.

The owner is a competent horsewoman that competes internationally, she can’t spell fear, so this wasn’t the usual scenario of having more horse than rider, but the horse was definitely assuming the role of chief rather than Indian and there was definitely a fly in the ointment somewhere. The owner was expecting me to bail her out of this situation. When a highly talented blooded horse develops a personality quirk or behavior pattern that is dangerous it should be nipped in the bud, before the habit becomes habitual and the horse is too dangerous and considered useless. These warm blood extreme athletes often look for excuses to be belligerent; with this one I had an edge, I’ve worked with him since he was three and luckily, he likes me. I planned to try to use this to my advantage.

Before my arrival, I had instructed my customer to buy a new soft nylon rope, 3/4 to 7/8 inch diameter and 34 feet long, a size that is used packing in the mountains to secure the top pack and steady the panniers.

When I arrived, she showed me the new rope and I was not impressed: it was the soft cotton type about an inch and a half in diameter. It had a steel eye woven into one end by one the local sail boat outfitters and it was nearly as useless as teats on a boar hog.

My customer had seen me do this to another colt several years ago, she knew what was about to happen. “Why didn’t you buy the 3/4 inch soft nylon?” I asked.

“I didn’t want him to get burned,” was her reply.

“You know this stuff stretches like rubber and keeps on stretching, until it is three times longer than what you started with.”

“The boat chandler told me it wouldn’t break.”

It was obvious she put some new parameters up for the boat chandler and being used to boats he assured her that this was the rope she needed complete with a steel eye splice braided in, and all for $150, for a rope you could buy at the hardware store for $20 dollars. Sadly, one of the disadvantages of being born rich is that you have a poor concept of the relative value of articles that the rest of us need to weigh carefully as to whether our personal budget can afford the expense compared to the object’s value and utility.

She led the horse out and I had another disappointment, he was wearing a new nylon halter with a single thickness leather crown piece. This was another slight deviation from instructions that compromised the procedure even more. I told her the reason I asked for a new nylon halter was that you could pull a semi out of a ditch with one and it wouldn’t break.

She informed me that the guy at the tack store assured her that it wouldn’t break. I should have insisted we go to the tack store and the hardware store for the right equipment; unfortunately, it was almost noon and I had nine horses to work on that day. Who knows, maybe I was being like an old spinster grammar school teacher and being too rigid in my standards: maybe these other people were right and I was wrong.

I led the horse to an old cedar tree with a four foot trunk; I new the tree would hold and I knew the horse would blow, these were the most predictable factors in this drama that was about to begin. I tied the cotton rope around the horse’s chest with a honda or a lariat knot placed in the center of his chest so that I could run the rest of the rope between the front legs and through the brass ‘O’ ring on the bottom of the halter. The rope was then tied to the cedar tree with a bowline so that the horses head was secured about 18 inches away from the tree. It was taken for granted that the horse would scrape some hide off against the tree in his struggles. Being careful not to get my fingers caught in the knots and have the horse pull back and losing digits was foremost on my mind at this stage. The horse was secured without incident and I backed away while he studied the rigging that had him secured to the tree. He waited a little over a minute and he threw his hind feet underneath himself and rolled up his back like a cat while straining against the rope and twisting his neck and head back and forth with his front feet off the ground. After staying suspended in the air for a minute or so he dropped back down to catch some air and study the rope some more. Part of the strategy of this procedure is to restrict the breathing with the lariat around the lungs when his struggles tighten the lariat, when he quits fighting the rope releases enough for him to breathe again.

I looked at our highly recommended rope and noticed that the horse was now standing four feet from the tree and the rope had enough slack to droop about two feet. I’d step in and retie the ropes, but I would probably just get caught in the next explosive tantrum; just then, the horse threw himself backwards with the extra force he could generate with the extra slack provided by the stretched rope and the crown piece exploded and flew apart as if it was loaded with a charge of dynamite. The horse did a 180 and rolled over backwards, when he stood up, the lariat fad tightened around his gut just in front of his hind legs and he was now kicking insanely at the rope and tree. He was in panic mode because of the pain and the situation was out of control, I drew my knife, walked up to the tree and touched the rope with the blade, ‘pow’ it blew apart like I had cut it with a straight razor.

Suddenly, the rope that I had asked for appeared from out of the tack room, I put a rope halter on the colt and we started over. This time our rigging held and the gelding fought against the tree, the rope, and himself until he was exhausted. This time the horse fought and the rope tightened around his ribcage, restricting his air and brought his chin to his chest when he tried to rear up on his hind legs. It took about 30 seconds for the horse to become civilized once again.

He stayed tied to the tree for the rest of the day without incident. Once in a while, I’d take a break and walk over to check the knots and touch the horse while speaking softly to him, to reassure him or provoke him, that was his choice, but he had learned his lesson. He hasn’t pulled back since.

The ‘colt’ wasn’t really a colt, a colt is an un-castrated male horse under five ears of age, if he is castrated as most are, he becomes a gelding regardless of his age, if he is five ears od age and still intact, he is considered a stallion. The term ‘stud colt’ is actually an oxymoron, at least in the parlance of the old horsemen of the past.

America, led on by a duplicitous media, managed to vent anger and frustration over several issues against former President George Bush. Some of this negativity was created by the president by his own policies or lack of policies. His indifference to the people’s concerns over spending and his lackadaisical approach to the illegal alien invasion was more than enough create a backlash of resentment towards the president and the Republican Party as well, a feeling of guilt by association.

Consequently, the public was ready for change and the Progressive/Euro-Socialists rushed to fill the breech. Manufacturing an image or political stage persona, complete with an ever present teleprompter with canned speeches and calculated responses to preprogrammed questions as well as women who could faint for camera cues, thus the super candidate Obama was literally created from nothingness.

The public was benumbed with the less than stellar oratorical skills of George when they were seeking the measured cadence of a refined statesman: suddenly, the seemingly refined Black Man stepped to the podium and delivered the reassurances of Hope and Change, that the public was desperately seeking. He seemed so perfect, a Brad Pitt with brains; although there was nagging and persistent problem that reused to go away. There were slight discrepancies in the man’s documentation; well actually, there is no documentation, neither academic nor of basic citizenship proving eligibility. Sadly, for President Obama, there are states that are working to deny him the right to be on their presidential ballots in 2012 unless he can prove he is eligible to be to hold the office.

For almost a year into Obama’s presidency, people were willing to overlook these matters of documentation in the forlorn hope that Obama could deliver us from our problems; unfortunately, after 20 months our problems seem to be increasing exponentially and our president is still unwilling to produce documentation of academic achievement or of his eligibility to serve and the American public watches while Nationalized Health Care is imposed against the will of the people and so-called stimulus plans seem to be nothing more than Chicago-style graft on a monumental level and the future of our grandchildren is compromised so that loyal Progressive/Euro-Socialists can retire as mega-millionaires.

If we think back to our six year old gelding tied to the tree, it is easy to imagine an American public that has become disappointed and resentful over being castrated or having a Republican President ignoring a public that wants a sound fiscal policy with a balanced budget and enforcement of our borders and immigration laws.

Being tied to the tree with an inferior halter and a rope that stretches to the point of absurdity, is easily transposed to the horse sniffing the Socialist system and balking or trying to rid itself of this phony system that is doomed to failure. When the horse reacts the bonds of Socialism will try to restrain the horse, at least until the halter breaks and the horse flips over backwards and reverses his position so that now the bondage of Socialism is no longer restricting his breathing, but is tightening its grip around his gut in an attempt to kill him. The horse is struggling in desperation and fear and the ever tightening rope of Socialism is is a ligature that will soon kill the horse. The rope of Socialism has to be cut or the horse will die.

Once the correct rigging is applied, representing the Free Market and our Constitution, the horse tests his boundaries and submits. Our system isn’t perfect, but like the correct ropes and halter, it’s way better than anything else that has been tried.

The situation with the gelding and the last election happened because if a catalyst, the election of Obama was predicated upon George Bush: I have no idea what caused the problem with the colt, unless he was just pissed over having his nuts cut out.

A young horse with limited experience is more than willing to try a new behavior, much like our youth vote who identified with the Progressive/Euro-Socialist candidate, who thought the new candidate would be free of corruption and lead the country to a new Utopia that would provide them with all their worldly needs; at least until the rope began to tighten around their gut and they realized that corruption was rampant and business as usual was the real agenda.

This fall we can cut the Progressive/Euro-Socialist ligature wrapped so tightly around our guts, instead of a knife, we will use the ballot and hope that this time we have a legislature that will listen to the will of the people.

A Grande Prix Jumper is worth about $500,000 to two million; so for myself, I will continue to ride horses that people give me, because they are scared of them.