A Good Horse

Saturday was difficult day for my husband. We had to put down our good old horse, KC. We bought this horse as a yearling for $400. He was one of the first horses my husband trained and fine tuned on his own. Our daughter was barely toddling around when he broke the horse. The first picture we have of her on a horse is on KC. Both of my older children learned to ride on this horse. We were calculating his age and since my daughter just turned 20, he would have been between 22 and 23 years old. He was stove up and looked awful for the last couple of winters but would always come back and look better in the summer.

I can remember a couple of funny anecdotes about KC. The first was when we were gathering cows from the irrigation meadow on one of the ranches and my daughter was riding KC. It was a frigid day and down on the creek and on that meadow it was about 10-15 degrees colder than anywhere else. My daughter had on her snow suit and was well padded because of that. The cows started to trot and as they did, KC began to trot also. My daughter had never been out of a walk and she bounced right out of the saddle. She hit the ground and when she did, KC stopped and looked around at her as if to say, "Why are you down there?" Of course she was crying and very upset and wanted to quit for the day and go to the house. After that we practiced a lot and she got better at riding. But she still had a HARD time getting him kicked up out of a walk! I don't know if he ever did trust her riding ability!

Another time our church was having a rodeo just for fun and I did the barrels and the poles on him and we were flying. I did the barrels in about 17 seconds. The same with the poles. I tried to get my friend to use him to participate and she didn't want to because he was too much horse for her. When it was the kids' turn we put my daughter on him and he did both events in that slow and easy rocking horse lope that is good for little kids. After my friend watched our daughter do the events she asked me where we got him and when she found out that it was the same horse I had ridden she was amazed.

Horses like that are few and far between. We wouldn't have taken $10,000 for that horse. My husband and I both got a little tearful about losing him. He was a good old horse. Now we begin the search for another for our youngest son. I hope we can find another just like KC.

Till next time.....