The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch:

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a new batch of horses:

One of them in particular, named Sherlock, really does not like to have his feet messed with. Even now that he has shoes on, you have to rope him three different ways to clean his back feet, and he still tries to get you.

They were at one point or another broken to riding, but, ah, not all of it stuck with them all the way down to Georgia. We train horses both for Western trail riding and various English sports, and so we have several trainers who work with the animals. Our top dressage trainer got bucked right off the new mare last week, which is always hilarious as long as nobody really gets hurt.

It's getting to be a little less hilarious as time goes along. That trainer I mentioned got thrown again by one of the others, and I got bucked off one that spooked because of a dump truck. He dumped me the small of my back, right on a big chunk of quartz. After eight or ten X-rays, the doctor decided nothing was broken, but he mentioned that this was somewhat surprising under the circumstances. This is the other reason I mentioned for not blogging much last week -- I was busy taking opiates.

The thing is that these are all draft crosses. They're tall and very heavy, every one of them at least sixteen hands and 1200-1400 pounds. When they start to buck, it's almost more like bullriding than bronco riding. Getting these horses rebroken to saddle is proving to be exciting.

Here's the one I was riding today, whose name is Delaney.



Doesn't he look like a sweetheart? And he'd better behave like one, too, because he's a little bit big:



The dog's name is Penny. She really is a sweetheart.