Dannyboy--Part 2

By Laura Crum


If you didn’t catch the first part of this story, see “Dannyboy” (March 09).
So, Danny, my quirky horse with the bucking issue, had finally overcome his bronco tendencies under the guidance of my cowboy friend who could ride a horse that bucked. He was ready to compete in the big time as a team roping horse. We were all proud of him. The horse was really talented. He could start hard, run as fast as any horse we knew, he would put a leg in the ground and check and pull a steer as well as any head horse. He was rock solid in the box. He was well broke, would spin and slide well enough that a reiner wouldn’t sneer. He was tough minded, and could make run after run without getting excited. He had every virtue a rope horse needs. And he was a pleasant, kind, cooperative horse to be around. One hundred per cent sound. Though plain-headed, he was well made. He still thought about bucking from time to time, but was easy to talk out of it. My friend had already been offered a lot of money for him. He was seven years old. And then, one morning, I got the call.

“Danny’s hurt. Bad.”

The story was a strange one. Danny was turned out in a large field, and my friend had driven in one evening after dark to feed. The horse was familiar with this, but for some reason, he had come running in and had run right straight at the truck. My friend came to a stop and thought the horse was going to come right through the windshield. But Danny buried up right as he got to the truck and slid half under the bumper, falling down as he tried to get up. He ran off on all four legs and my friend thought he was fine. But the next morning the horse was three legged. (Since then I have heard of other horses that did this; people tell me they are blinded by the headlights and try to run between them.)

We hauled the horse to the best vet I knew, who said that Danny had thoroughly torn up his stifle joint. If he was given sufficient rest (and the vet said the only other horse he knew of who had this injury and recovered, it had taken several years of pasture layoff) he might be ridable. Probably never sound enough to rope on, though.

My cowboy friend wasn’t interested in keeping the horse. It was up to me to decide what to do. I could put him down or keep him myself and give him a chance.

Logic dictated I should put the horse down. Even if he were sound, I wouldn’t have chosen him as my riding horse. I didn’t want one that might buck. And now he might never be sound again. But Danny looked at me with his big kind eyes and I just couldn’t do it. So I kept him

.
I gave the horse his several years of turnout. And he did become riding horse sound. He was still a touch off in his right hind, but the vet said it was just residual arthritis issues. Danny would, mostly, warm up out of this and look completely sound. I let another young cowboy friend of mine heel on him for a couple of summers. Danny did fine, though we had to keep him on Adequan, warm him up extra carefully, and he still had days where he was too sore to use. It was an off and on thing. He was still very fast, cowy, good-minded, a terrific rope horse. Everybody admired him. He was still the nicest horse to be around that you can imagine. He would have done fine as a horse for light riding, but how do you place a horse that can only be ridden lightly because of an injury, but also might buck you off? Because, oh yeah, Danny would still occasionally buck. Whatever form of cinchieness he had, it never really went away. Once in awhile, for no reason we could predict, he’d “catch himself” and start bucking. He didn’t buck that hard any more, and he’d stop if you yelled at him, you didn’t even have to spank him. He never bucked anyone else off, but I still wasn’t game to let inexperienced people ride him. Hell, I wasn’t game to ride him myself. I’m too old and out of shape to want to wonder if/when my horse is going to start bucking.

So, I retired him. He lives in my pasture, is plenty sound enough to run and buck and play, though he isn’t quite 100% sound. He loves attention, loves to be petted, is still a pleasure to be around. Kids walk out in the field and hug him. My little boy loves him. Easy to haul, easy to trim, cooperative about anything you want to do….that’s Danny. Everybody likes him. But every time I look at him I shake my head. What a great horse he could have been. But for bad luck…

Still, Danny had good luck in a way, as the photo below will show. That’s Danny and Gunner (my 29 year old horse) as they look today. Not such a bad life, don’t you think?

I modeled the colt called Danny that my protagonist, Gail McCarthy, starts, in my seventh book, Hayburner(reviewed last week by Janet on her mugwump chronicles blog---and by the way, I highly recommend a trip to that blog today), on the real Danny. So, if anyone wants to read a few more stories about Dannyboy, there’s your chance.

Cheers,
Laura Crum


PS—For those who are interested, I finished my 11th mystery this week. The ms is printed and will go off to the editor tomorrow. So, “cheers” is particularly appropriate.

I Used To Be a Horse Trainer

By Laura Crum


First off, I have to say how thrilled I am that Janet Huntington is posting here on Equestrian Ink. She is a wonderful writer, as well as a talented horse trainer, and I have so enjoyed reading her blog, “Mugwump Chronicles”. Her stories will often bring me back to the days when I trained horses, rather than writing equine mysteries. This was awhile ago; the last colt I broke and trained is thirteen years old now. But the memories are still vivid and my mind goes back easily to the many young horses I rode and the particular problems they presented. Not so long ago, reading one of mugwump’s great “Sonita posts”, I was reminded of a horse I trained for my team roping partner, a mostly Thoroughbred gelding named Rebby.

Rebby comes into my mind easily enough, because I am still taking care of him, now that he is a twenty something year old horse and retired. My old team roping partner and I keep our retired pastured horses together and share the chore of feeding them, and several mornings a week Rebby comes charging in to see me, ready for his flake of hay. I can’t forget him.

I had never really trained a Thoroughbred horse before Rebby; all the horses I rode when I was working for reining and cutting trainers were cowhorse bred Quarter Horses. All the colts I trained and rode for my uncle, who raised Quarter Horses, were foundation bred QHs. All the horses I’d ever bought for myself were QHs with cowhorse breeding. Rebby was a 16 hand appendix registered QH, which means for all practical purposes that he was a TB. His mother was a TB and his sire was a running bred QH, which means mostly TB. So there you go.

Initially I saw this as no big deal. Rebby was four years old and had had ninety or so days put on him by a not-all-that-handy cowboy. He was gentle enough to ride, if ignorant, and with a tendency to stick his nose out and prop when you stopped him. My friend and roping partner had got him cheap and wanted me to turn him into a rope horse. I said sure.

My first impression of Reb was positive. I had never in my life ridden a colt who could pick you up and carry you at the lope the way this one could. I felt like I was floating when I rode him. Collection came naturally to him. Maybe all TB horses are like this, I wouldn’t know. Rebby was naturally cowy; I had no problems getting him to hook onto a cow. He was also naturally bold; I had no problem getting him used to the rope, either. He had no tendency to spook sideways; he had no inclination to buck. None at all. There ends the list of things I had no problem with.

My first indication that Rebby was a little odd came when I first caught him and led him in to be saddled. Rebby walked right on my heels….I mean right on my heels, breathing down my neck. There was no malice in it; he just wanted to be right on top of me. I backed him off. I did this again, and again, and again. I backed Rebby off the top of me endlessly. I wasn’t gentle and kind about it either. I really seriously did not want Rebby on top of me, stepping on my toes. Rebby never seemed to truly get this. I had to correct him at least once or twice a day. I was puzzled. I didn’t get it why he couldn’t get it.
Then one day I ran into his former owner. She mentioned that she’d rescued the horse from a woman who had run out of money and couldn’t pay the board bill. This woman had raised Rebby herself. His mother had died at birth. You guessed it. My project was a bottle colt. No wonder he wanted to be right on top of me.

This information explained a lot of Rebby’s behaviors to me. He was gentle but pushy; he required to be set down several times a day. But he never had any ill intentions at all. Okey-dokey. Bottle colt.

The next problem I ran into was also a new one for me. Did I mention that Reb was a TB and I had never trained a TB? Reb liked to run. He liked to run hard. Where a cowhorse bred horse is likely to spook sideways when startled, Reb never did this. He bolted forward--his version of a spook. Charge was Rebby’s first response to everything. I could never really get used to this; Reb’s saving grace was that he was both gentle and bold and didn’t “spook” that often. But once we got to chasing steers, the “run factor” assumed a whole different dimension.

Rebby would chase a steer all right. He would charge after a steer with great enthusiasm, and he could really run. But Rebby had no intention of slowing down when he got to the steer. Reb wanted to beat that steer to the finish line. He had every intention of sailing on past and winning the race. I briefly considered telling my team roping partner to sell him as a bulldogging horse.

Instead I worked on teaching Rebby to answer when I checked him, which turned into a very long project. For details on how I did this, and other insights on stopping, see Janet’s post today on her Mugwump Chronicles blog. I’ll cut this short by saying that, eventually, I taught Reb to back off when I pulled on the reins and his career as a team roping horse took off. My partner loved Rebby, once I got him trained: everybody admired him. I was proud of what I’d accomplished with my little TB bottle colt.

The end of the story? Unfortunately Rebby broke down at ten years of age. My partner hauled him to a major equine hospital where they diagnosed him as having a strained sacroiliac joint. Reb didn’t seem to be in pain, but walked, trotted and loped with an odd waddle in his gait. He had always been such a kind and well-intentioned horse that my partner decided to retire him to the pasture to live out his life as long as he was comfortable. I agreed to help take care of him. And Reb has remained stable for well over ten years now; he still has that odd waddle, but can gallop up for his hay with enthusiasm. It makes me happy to see him, knowing he’s had a good life; at the same time it makes me sad that he broke down so young. Its one of the reasons I eventually turned away from team roping, as I once turned away from cutting and reining. I don’t like to see the number of horses that break down in the course of competing (not that these events are any worse for horses in the long run than jumping, western pleasure, or any other competitive event).

These days I don’t train horses, I write books about horses. (Now there’s two lucrative pursuits for you—maybe I’m not too smart.) I still enjoy riding my broke horses in the arena and down the trail, and I am happy to report that I’ve had no breakdowns lately—knock on wood. But every time my partner and I look at Rebby we shake our heads ruefully, and one of us has to say, “Wasn’t he a great horse?” I’m sure all you fellow horse people will understand.
Cheers,
To Rebby

Laura Crum

Welcome to Janet

It's my pleasure to welcome Janet Huntington, a talented equine artist and lllustrator and the author of the popular Mugwump Chronicles to our list of regular contributors. Janet will be posting on Saturdays (probably every other Saturday). Her first post will be today. Welcome, Janet. We're thrilled to have you.

Mugwump / Janet

By Laura Crum



As any of you who have been reading my posts here know, I’m relatively new to blogging. Until the folks who created this site invited me to write a bi-weekly blog for them (and I accepted) back in March of this year, I had never even read a blog. I had no idea what was out there in the blogosphere. But having accepted the invitation to write one, I figured I’d better go find out what it was I was supposed to be writing. So, I looked around and found a veritable army of “horse blogs”, some with many readers, some with very few. It was instructive. I learned what blogging amounted to. But among these blogs, one stood head and shoulders above the rest (in my view), and that was “mugwump chronicles”.

Most of you are probably already fans of mugwump, so I’m preaching to the choir here, but for those of you who haven’t read this blog, mugwump is a horse trainer. She has had a long career training reined cowhorses and she is, in my book, a very talented and savvy trainer. Her blog offers well thought out and very tactful advice (for free) to all who ask—how cool is that?

But even more wonderful (if possible) than her skill as a horse trainer is her talent as a writer. By great good fortune, the day I stumbled upon her blog was the day she posted chapter one of her “Sonita story”, one of the most moving chronicles of training a young horse that I have ever read—anywhere. Like so many others, I became addicted to this story, waiting eagerly for the next installment. And, of course, I wrote to mugwump and told her what a great writer I thought she was/is.

Mugwump wrote back and we discovered we had an amazing number of similarities. We had both trained and shown cowhorses, we were both interested in writing about horses, she loved mysteries, we are the same age, we both went to Catholic school….the list went on and on. Our views about horses and training horses were almost identical. I think we were both blown away by how much we had in common. In the course of this dialogue, mugwump gave me her name and revealed that in her “real life”, get this, she was/is an artist. And she gave me her website address.

So I went to http://www.cowhorseart.com/ and I was even more astounded. Because this talented horse trainer and writer is an equally talented artist who has illustrated many books, done some wonderful commissioned portraits of people and horses and has an incredibly delightful series of cards for sale. I promptly ordered some Xmas cards for myself and asked mugwump, who I now knew as the artist Janet Huntington, why she didn’t use her popular blog to promote her artwork.

Turns out, as some of you already know, that mugwump/Janet is a modest, private person and she just wasn’t sure if she wanted to go public with her other career, so to speak. So, to make a long story short, I pretty much begged her to do so. I felt that lots of her fans would love her artwork as much as I did, and be just as amazed as I am/was that she is so multi-talented. (I couldn’t draw a decent horse to save my life—this is one thing we don’t have in common.)

In the end, Janet has decided to go public as mugwump, and I know you will all enjoy her artwork as much as I did. And you’ll probably all want Xmas cards, too. So, just for fun, we decided we’d do a joint promotion: the winner of today’s contest will receive a set of Janet Huntington Xmas cards and a signed copy of my first equine mystery, Cutter.

And all of you, please, do yourselves a favor, visit http://www.cowhorseart.com/ and take a look at what a wonderful artist mugwump is. On top of being a terrific horse trainer and a great writer. It ought to be illegal to have so many talents. (I’m kidding—I’m just jealous.) And for those, if there are any, who haven’t yet found her mugwump chronicles blog, I highly recommend a visit there, too. This is some seriously good writing about horses, and I know that those of you who visit this site are folks who are interested in writing about horses.

And now, drumroll please, for the contest. The first person to answer the question: Where in the blogosphere did mugwump and I first “meet”? and post the correct answer in the comments on this blog will get the cards and book. You will also have to email me your snail mail address so that I can send them to you. I’ll respond in the comments and let you know who won. That person can email me at laurae@cruzio.com

The rest of you will have to buy your cards and books, if you want them, and I will shamelessly say that the combo of a Janet Huntington card and a book by any author on this site will make a wonderful Xmas gift for horse lovers you may know.

Here, just to give you a taste, is one of my favorites of her Xmas cards: "Cutting Rudolf"

Have fun.
Laura Crum