The Farm - Part Two

CISCO

Horses

To anyone who has ever ridden a horse, you understand the size and power of these beasts.  There’s a certain majesty about them that doesn’t compare to any other animal.  They can be as docile as an old man living his last days on a summer rocker of a grand southern plantation porch or as wild and loose as the Tasmanian Devil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon series. 

The horses were the original reason we bought the farm.  I was paying over $400.00 a month to board two horses plus feed and hay and the aforementioned labor Aria was putting in exchange for “riding lessons” by the woman who owned the neighboring farm.  By today’s standard, that was inexpensive, but as a young father with three kids, it was a king’s ransom. 

The mortgage on the Gentleman’s Farm was about $750.00 a month – it seemed like a no brainer.  With the extra stalls, the difference between what we were paying for boarding and the extra mortgage could be made up by renting out the extra stalls would more than cover the nut.

More about that later.

Cisco was a Palomino.  For the unenlightened, a Palomino is golden in color with a white mane and tail. They were introduced genetically by something called a cream gene working with a red base coat and was considered a non-dominant breed.  CISCO was what I liked to call broad in the beam – He wasn’t fat, but he didn’t have the height or length of his stablemates.  He was “roundish” with a good disposition overall but could be lazy during the summer.

Cisco came to us from a local farm who took in rescue horses – we had no horse trailer, so we rode him from the farm to where we were boarding him. He was about 10 years old when we got him and learned later that he was given to the rescue because he had respiratory issues.  Looking back, this probably was the reason for his personality and his perchance to plod along.  He was never a speedy fellow.

Aria learned to ride Cisco western style but rather than purchase a western style saddle with a metal horn, we got a good deal on an Australian saddle, which had a leather loop horn for about $700.00. It was a gorgeous slab of leather, medium brown in color that neatly accented his light coat. 

Under the saddle went a colorful striped blanket like you see being sold in the markets and roadsides of Mexican towns and villas. Because of his wide girth, Cisco would sweat profusely through the blanket during even short rides or lessons.  I was always amazed at how drenched his coat became when it came time to unsaddle him.

In addition to the saddle, there was the western bridle. Think of the bridle as the steering wheel on a car. The bridle and headstock were leather and designed to fit over the nose and ears of a horse with a metal “bit” that was inserted in the mouth of the horse with two leads off the bit that the rider would hold in his or her hands.  To make the horse turn left, you would pull on the left lead lightly, which caused the horse to turn its head to the left. To go right, you would pull on the right lead lightly. To make a horse stop, you would pull both leads lightly back toward you. 

To me as a casual rider, this entire lead and bit mechanism was somewhat of a fiasco.  The horse didn’t like the bit in its mouth (who would?), and it would pull its head up when you tried to insert the metal bar.  The bit sat rather far in the back of the mouth over the tongue near the base of the jawline behind two flat incisors and in front of the horse’s molars.  I always thought this was a rather convenient space to exist in a horse’s mouth and thought that they were created by horse dentists when horses were first born like cropping tails on dogs or circumcising male babies, but it turns out they’ve always been that way and there is documented history as far back as the twelfth century BC that bits of stone or wood had been in use by riders in some fashion.

Some horses liked to play with their bits – they would try to push them out of the space between their teeth with their tongues.  Cisco would clank his around causing a clicking sound that drove me insane. It was one of those weird noises that you never hear anywhere else in the world except among horses.  Imagine 3 or 4 horses doing it all simultaneously, like little alien tap dancers all listening the beat of their own drums.

The concept of left, right stop seemed simple enough to understand in principle but extremely difficult to master.  Entire horseback riding lessons were devoted to how to hold the reins of the horse and every horse behaved differently. Some instructors believed in the left rein left hand right rein right hand method; others espoused the split rein in one hand method. There were numerous spirited discussions about how high to hold the reins off the neck of the horse like a typewriter teacher smacking your hand for resting your wrists on the keyboard.

For me, it remained a mystery unsolved.  Cisco didn’t care if you wrapped the rein around his neck like a noose and tapped him with the leather ends. Another horse would flinch if the lead touched their skin anywhere on its body. The real secret, it seemed, was to determine who was in control, rider or horse and many horses put their owners through hell during that ordeal.

I learned early on that there was a difference between a light and hard tug on a rein.  We had good friends who owned a horse farm not far from us and loved to gallop their steads through a long expanse that traversed their property line up to some high-power electric lines.  It allowed the rider a good mile long run for two or three horses to race from one end to the other before reaching a line of trees heading into the woods.

On one particular afternoon, Denise and Jack decided to saddle up their horses, and we would race down this path winner takes all – We had consumed a beer or two before the rivalry began, so I was filled with false bravado and thought I was a better rider than I actually was. 

The race began – Denise had taken an early lead, but I was on a larger, faster horse and soon overtook her racing faster than I had ever ridden before.  I reached the end of the path before I knew it and realized too late that if I did not stop, I’d wind up in the trees.  I pulled back HARD on both reins which resulted in exactly what it was supposed to do.  The horse stopped dead in its tracks.  Unfortunately, I forgot about the laws of physics and flew over the head of the horse landing squarely in the trees.

The horse simply looked at me as if to say “schmuck” and trotted back to the barn without me.

Next time - CISCO gets a barn mate.