The heroes of my formative years included Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and the Lone Ranger, each of whom rode a horse that was intelligent, loyal, and extremely useful. The horse would whinny to warn the Good Guy that the Bad Guy was sneaking up on him, or would stand patiently in one place while the hero fought the robber. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a horse administering first aid. In-depth studies would show that Trigger’s I. Q. exceeded the I. Q. of 80% of today’s sit-com actors. Only after my youth did I learn that this carefully contrived public image of the horse as the benevolent, self-effacing beast of burden is a pretense created and perpetuated by the Horse Lobby.
One of my first run-ins with the four-legged critters was when I was a young teenager and our church youth group rented horses at a stable. I pictured myself as a young Lone Ranger, riding confidently across the wilderness. Unfortunately, I was assigned to ride one of the two Shetland ponies, and my visions of cowboy glory were dashed into sawdust even before I climbed onto my mini-horse. But that wasn’t my lowest level of humiliation that day: my horse had inflated his belly while being saddled up, and about the time I was trotting along about forty miles per hour he decided that was a good time to deflate his belly. The resultant loosening of the cinch strap allowed the saddle to slowly slip down around his belly, and gravity keep me in the saddle most of the way down. I remember the world tilting and the crunch of gravel on my cheek as I bit the dust, literally and figuratively. I couldn’t really distinguish the horse’s whinny from the snickers of the girls I was trying to impress.
When I was a Boy Scout I had a good friend who owned horses and actually enjoyed riding them. My friend was always giving me helpful advice: “Don’t let her have her head! Let her know who’s BOSS!” Right. My friend was 200 pounds of solid muscle, and probably bench pressed his horse, who was smart enough to know who put the feedbag on, every day just for exercise. Of course my friend WAS Boss. My horse and I also knew who was boss: the horse. There I was, a ninety-pound weakling, and I was supposed to convince an 8,000 pound horse, with a neck of solid muscle as thick as my waist, with teeth strong enough to bite my leg off, that I was the boss??
A couple of times I have managed to stay on the horse and have learned about the Horse’s Revenge: The trot. The trot is very effective for shortening the spine and loosening fillings in your teeth. Experienced horse-people pretend that they like to ride a trotting horse, but to me the trot is a sure way to make a mush of your internal organs. The trot is so infamous that it has even had an intestinal disorder named after it.
Horses have an internal guidance system that tells them where to walk so that the rider is stabbed by all the tree branches. The guidance system also tells them when they stop moving farther from their stable and start returning to it. When they start the return trip, it is as if they are going downhill: they pick up speed. It’s at times like this that the experienced horse-people will repeat their advice to “let him know who’s boss.” It is easier to stop an “iron horse” with your bare hands than a living horse on the way back to the stable. Many times my desperate “WHOA!” has turned into a terrified “WOE!”
My last bad experience with horses was a few of years ago when we were vacationing in the Rocky Mountains. My wife, a card-carrying member of the Horse Lobby, suggested that we go horseback riding. In a moment of insanity, I signed up the whole family at the stables for a two-hour ride, at a price that would allow the horses to vacation in Aruba half the winter. I remember thinking, “I don’t want to buy the horse, I just want to ride it.” Since our two daughters were very young, we decided to put them in front of us in the saddle, rather than buy two extra horses.
The trail was relatively tame, since previous riders had already been impaled on all the available branches, and had been hauled away in ambulances. My daughters liked the view from way up on the horse, and liked the feeling of movement, until the horses started doing what horses do as soon as they get out of their stable. “Mom, look at what that horse is doing! It’s disgusting!” “Oh, Dad, that horse is (gag) going potty (gag) right on the middle of the (gag) trail, and I feel like I’m going to”– “Oh, girls, look at that pretty mountain up there!”
The two-hour ride finally ended, with both daughters asleep for part of the ride (the most expensive nap they have ever had). The last obstacle for us to overcome was The Dismount. We were able to move our arms enough to get the girls passed down to helpful fellow-riders, but when it came time to get off, we realized that we were paralyzed. Our daughters had blocked off every blood vessel and nerve to our legs, and it felt like rigor mortis had set in down there. I looked around in vain for a crane or a fork lift, but none were handy. Where were the loose cinch straps and bucking broncos when I needed them? Eventually we were able to stagger from the horses, mostly using arm strength. For a few days I was afraid I would never regain feeling below my waist, but I was even more sorry when the feeling did return.
That experience was my final break with horses. I now have enough horse sense to admit that I don’t like riding. The last time we had a chance to ride, my wife (who has a short memory of pain) went riding alone, while I stayed back and read a book. I can still bear to watch Western movies, but when it comes to riding, I think the horse is having the last horse laugh.
