A dark time for the rebellion

I am enjoying looking back through my pictures! Here's one that's pretty representative of the trails:


A lot of riders hated the four wheelers, but if they didn't ride back there, we'd lose the trails within a year. Things grow so fast in Memphis! The four wheelers made trails and ruined trails and moved on to make new trails, and we just rode where ever we could.

It was beautiful in the spring and summer.


So for some reason I thought it'd be a good idea to buy my friend's 4 yo Percheron gelding when she put him up for sale. He was unbroke, but very sweet natured. Poppy was a great name for him - I thought he acted like he'd been hitting the opium. I thought that maybe my husband would like to ride a total stoner of a horse, and if G never wanted to ride, I could get Poppy broke and resell him later.


He was an easy fellow to start, even with as little experience as I had. Our first trail rides blew his mind, maaaan. He didn't realize that the world was bigger than the stable, that it just went on and on, with hills and trees and ponds and rivers. And he didn't know how to follow a trail - he'd get all big-eyed and just start walking straight ahead, plunging through weeds and small trees and ditches.

My best friend James was starting a really rank, hateful, insane stud at the same time. We went out together on our green horses pretty often, with good success, til that son of a bitch kicked me and Poppy. Chip was the kind of really dangerous horse who had gone crazy from confinement and hormones, and he calculated ways to hurt humans. His idiot owners loved him and thought he was a sweetheart, even though he regularly hurt everybody who handled him.

Well, not James. James was way too smart and fast to get hurt by Chip, and Chip actually rode pretty well for him. Anyway, we were out in a field, letting the horses graze for a minute on the way back in, when with absolutely no warning or provocation Chip just double-barreled Poppy as hard as he could. He caught Poppy in the ribs and me just behind the knee - another inch forward and he'd have seriously jacked me up. While I was wondering if I'd really just been kicked and if my leg was broken, Poppy wheeled around and tagged Chip right back, and THEN I woke up and got control of my horse. James was just as startled as me, but he probably recovered faster - we got the horses separated and headed back to the barn. I was lame for a week or so, with a huge purple bruise, but nothing seriously got hurt.

So things went along with three horses for a while. Then that summer, about a year after I got Champ, my husband got cut in the third round of layoffs from his job. This was back in the halcyon days of 2007, when we all thought the housing market was a little overpriced but everything else seemed to be ok. Ahhh, innocence. G looked for three months, but everybody in his area had a hiring freeze on, and he had to take a job as a consultant in Ohio. We decided I should stay in Memphis and finish school, so he packed up his car and drove away to Ohio and I packed up our stuff and moved to a cheaper place.

A much cheaper place. It was, in fact, the kind of place where there was no heat. The owner had just picked it up as a foreclosure and rented it promptly to me without really ascertaining that MLGW would hook up the gas again. Turns out the entire gas line had been taken out to the street. It doesn't get really cold in Memphis in the winter, but it gets cold enough. I spent a month fighting with the landlord about getting the damn gas turned on, sleeping on the couch fully clothed, with all the animals draped over me, taking finals, and working 40 hour weeks.

I accidentally got a puppy then, too.


And I bought a revenge-horse. See, G called me talking about getting a TV, and I was all "you don't need a TV you have a computer." Then he called again, a couple of times, while I was riding in a Christmas parade and didn't even have my phone on me. I didn't answer, so he called his best friend and said "If you were Funder and I asked if I should get this sweet TV on sale, what would you say?" His BFF, of course, said "Well if I were Funder I would love you and want you to be happy, so you should get the TV." And lo, G got a really sweet big HD TV at Best Buy for like 50% off, 24 months no interest.

I was pretty annoyed, because I was living in a house with no heat and he just bought a TV. And this big classy slightly crazy mare was for sale, ALSO for no money down no interest, and... well... I bought Dixie. I am a paragon of adult problem-solving skills, yall. Sigh.


Look how dark she was! And her mane actually is longer now than when I bought her. Here's a really horrible cell phone pic:


Her feet were pretty jacked up.


Her brain was completely fried. All she knew how to do was rack - no woah, no other gaits, no slowing down or speeding up, no matter the terrain. She didn't know how to stand to mount - it took someone holding her head for me to vault on. She came from a padded show barn, so she was broke to ride at 18 months, then had a show package put on - her feet had another 6" of hard rubber pads strapped on. She didn't work out there - too diagonal, and no doubt too stubborn - so she was sold to a friend of mine who did the rehab to get her flat-shod again. My friend, who was kind of a low-level horse trader, thought I should have a really nice mare - she thought my two bays were scrubs.

Anyway, I was really over my head with Dixie, but that hadn't stopped me from anything yet, so why should it matter with her?

Long strange trip

Way back in 2006, life was pretty good. G and I had moved on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky in downtown Memphis. I was in law school, and he had a Good Job with a Big Company. We had mentally unstable Lab named Linux (yes, I know, I'm a nerd) and I wanted a motorcycle. Or a horse! But a motorcycle would do. Or a horse would be great.

There was a coffeeshop downstairs and two doors down from our building, a little independent place with a crazy owner and an ever-changing cast of baristas. I got to be friends with a particularly crazy one and learned that she had a horse! She kept her mare just a few miles north of downtown, in a really sketchy part of town called Frayser. She invited me to come out and ride, so I did a few times. I did some (in retrospect, rather unrealistic) math and announced that a horse would only cost, like, $100 a month. But a motorcycle would be pretty awesome too.

My husband finally decided that I was slightly less likely to kill myself on a horse, and he told me that we could get a horse if I would STFU about the motorcycle and never ask for one again. That fall, he got a bonus, and we sold my sweet little Eclipse to a friend and bought a truck and a horse.

I got Champ out of the newspaper, of all things. I had a $1500 budget, and I knew just enough to know I needed a bombproof gelding, 9-15 years old. I called about a few horses, from CL and from the newspaper, but Champ sounded like the best prospect. He was 12, and it was love at first sight. The sweet old fellow I got Champ from had three horses - a spotted chestnut TWH, a grey Arab, and a plain bay. The bay looked up at me when I got out of my truck, and I couldn't take my eyes off of him. He neck reined and did a slow gait, and he had four legs and a heartbeat, and I bought him that day.

Here he is the day I got him.


Scraggly fugly thing. Half his mane was bald - I called it Gelding Pattern Baldness - he was sickle-hocked, he had a horrid topline and a pipecleaner tail, and he had the kindest personality I've ever met.



The place I boarded at rented stalls for $60/mo, self-care. ($100/mo wasn't totally unrealistic!) They were out of tack rooms, so they gave me an extra stall and I turned it into a badass tack room. I put some tin on the walls, built a plywood floor, wired up switched fluorescent lights, added some benches and saddle and blanket racks.

The stable had three barns. There was a very sad old mare in my barn, perpetually locked in her stall with knee-deep manure and a 6 mo baby at her side. The baby was still nursing and had eaten all the old mare's mane and tail. That poor old thing hung her head out and watched me whenever I went in the barn, and I fed her carrots and rubbed her head a lot. When I heard she was for sale, I had to buy her. (Excuse: you can't ride the same horse every day, that's just cruel!) Silky set me back all of $450.



I commandeered a turnout paddock that no one ever used and my two horses lived there, except for when it rained. Champ was fun and easy to ride, and Silky was squirrely and pacey and very hard to ride. I rode them both, six days a week.

I did the most ridiculous dumb shit and got away with it. Champ almost killed us backing into the highway once, and he took up a minor rearing habit. Silky didn't want to stand still for me to mount, so I'd just tie her up and get on, then lean over and unhook the lead. They lived in a falling-down barbed wire pasture. I had never actually seen anyone wear a helmet in real life. One time I rode under a railroad trestle bridge while a train was going by overhead, because I needed to get away from the pack of four-wheelers roaring toward us on a narrow trail. I got chased by a dude on a four-wheeler with a shotgun once. My best riding buddy and I found a stripped torched car in the woods, still smoking. He saved me from riding Champ into a nest of cottonmouths one spring, and we went out after dark in the summers to watch the deer feed.

I let the farrier re-shoe Champ once, then decided I wanted to try that barefoot thing I'd been reading about on the internet. Champ was ouchy on gravel, but it was easy enough to ride around the gravel and stick to soft dirt, and he was fine there. I decided the farrier was a drunken idiot and learned to trim for myself. I hired him to pull shoes every time I bought a horse, and I don't think he ever really noticed that I never got him to come back and trim any other time.

I found a good hay farmer, but he only sold round bales. I started borrowing a 16' flatbed utility trailer to haul my hay home, and I learned to back that thing around trees and dead cars and tractors and mud puddles. I learned how to do a lot of stuff for myself.

I'll tell yall about my Percheron Poppy, and my beautiful Dixie, next time.

Freedom to bolt, at RPF, and my experiences with Champ

Edna over at Red Pony Farm started off wondering why her horse is more curious about Horse Eating Monsters when at liberty than when ridden. Maybe, she thinks, it's because the mare feels like she's free to bolt if she wants to, so she's braver? She mentioned horses who freak out with too much contact, compared with horses who turn into The Black Stallion if they aren't ridden with contact. I've got both types, lucky me.

Champ was my first horse. A really nice down to earth old fellow sold him to me - he'd bought Champ as a yearling, trained him, and kept him for the next 11 years. In that understated old southern guy way, he gave me some advice about Champ. "Just ride him in that bridle that I'm giving you with him. He doesn't need a fancier bit. And don't get up in his mouth, you don't need to do that."

I heard him, but like most of life, I didn't understand him til I'd made my own mistakes.

Back at my ghetto boarding barn, I had a couple of nice days tooling around on a loose rein, like a WP quarter horse. The experts gathered around. "He's a gaited horse. Hold him back or he won't gait! If you're not holding his head up and he trips he'll fall and break his jaw."* It kinda sounded like bullshit to me but I also didn't want my horse to break his jaw, so I started riding with more contact.

*This is actual honest to god advice I received, yall.

My nice horse went away. He got really fractious and was constantly tossing his head or backing up. If I kicked him forward when he was backing up, then made him stand, he'd rear. We almost died when he backed out of the median into the path of a semi. Neither of us were happy.

I thought back to what the nice old fellow had told me. "Don't get all up in his mouth." Was I, in fact, "all up in his mouth"? But I wasn't pulling hard, honestly! It was just light contact! Well, I decided to try to ride him like a QH again. I dropped the reins, to a certain point. He pulled and fussed and tried to get me to let go of them completely, and I told him he had plenty of slack and to quit fussing. He decided that yes, he did have plenty of slack.

My sweet sensible horse came back. He quit rearing (except when I ask him to cross something he doesn't want to cross, and then I just whack him on the neck and tell him to quit clowning and he does what I ask without anymore fuss). He quit backing up - except for when I pick up contact but don't signal with my legs. How about that - he was doing what he'd been trained to do when he tried to kill us on the highway.

I did a LOT of reading about horse psychology and intuitive cues around that time. I learned that the natural cue for a rear is pressure on the reins (don't go forward) plus pressure from your legs (go forward). How about that - I was very clearly "telling" him to rear and then getting mad at him for it. Poor guy.

So Champ is a gelding who demands to be ridden on very light or no contact. Over the years, we've gotten to where I can ride him with the lightest possible contact, when I want him to gait. If I'm letting him rate his own speed, there has got to be slack in the reins or he's fussin. Tossing his head and chomping the bit and turning his head to roll his eyes at me. He's not nearly as emotional and weird as my mares, but he's got just as much personality as any horse I've ever met.

And no, I was never stupid enough to try changing out his bit (medium port unbroken medium shank curb bit). I did try riding him in a Dr. Cook's Bitless Bridle, but that was an immediate failure. I suspect the feel of the straps grabbing his head was really annoying / claustrophobic, because he refused to listen and came closer to bolting with that thing on his head than he ever has before.

Anyway, that's Champ, and I'm not sure what relevance it really has to Edna's post. But I can attest that some horses just Do Not Want Contact.

Shamelessly stolen from Daun

Daun at The Eventing Percheron recently put up a really well-thought-out post regarding Brego's ancestry: The Eventing Percheron: The Brego Identity. I thought I'd share what I know about Poppy's background.

I've had Poppy since February '07. I think I sweet-talked my husband into buying him as a Valentine's Day present. I'm not entirely sure why I wanted him. I'd thought Poppy was a big beautiful sweetie since I first saw him, back in 06 before I even owned my own horse. I'd done well with Champ and Silky, and I wanted to try (pick your favorite word) breaking / training a green horse. And I had the stupid forlorn hope that my husband would one day ride him. Well, two outta three ain't bad!

I got him from the barn manager, who was going through one of her biannual "oh fuck this I have too many horses I'm going to sell some!" crises. The manager, J, had owned Poppy since he was a weanling - 6 or 7 months old, and as big as a small Quarter Horse. J's a big woman who decided that she wanted a horse she wouldn't feel like she was squashing. Unfortunately, she's also scared of heights - and Poppy just kept growing. She kept him long after she realized she'd never ride him, because she didn't want him ending up pulling a carriage.* I bought him on the condition that as long as I board out there, I will never sell him to anyone but her - a verbal buyback clause. (We're rednecks, and we don't tend to write stuff down. Nobody has the money to hire a lawyer to sue for enforcement, anyway. Except me, I suppose.)

Anyway, J purchased young Poppy from a lady who'd rescued two pregnant PMU Percherons from Canada. After the lady got her two Percherons and turned them out with her five QHs and watched two drafts become four drafts, she realized she didn't have the pasture for all of them. So she sold Poppy to J. The first owner is the one who named Poppy, and nobody has a good explanation for his name. But it's very him. Sometimes I call him Big Boo, but Poppy is much more dignified.

So Poppy is technically a grade horse. But he's very drafty. His head, nose to ears, is probably a yard long. His feet are like dinner plates. His legs are still very narrow, like a hitch-type draft, but his torso's finally starting to fill out. I suppose he could be a Perch x draft, but he's sure not a Perch x light horse. And like Brego - he's black, with a star, not much feathering, and that's pretty damn Percheron-y. Calling Poppy a Percheron is like calling my double-coated otter-tailed water-loving yellow retriever a Labrador.

*Re: carriages. There's nothing wrong, per se, with having a horse earn his own living. And certainly nothing wrong with having a draft pull something to earn his bale of hay a day! But the Memphis carriage horses are heartbreaking. They're started young, worked hard, shod with metal and those goofy rubber shoes that do nothing to ease the concussion, and then sold to bleeding-heart fools or the meat market when they break down at 10-15. There's a new lady at the barn, a slightly insane "furbaby" type, who bought a lovely red roan Belgian from the carriage people. He's 11, with such bad navicular that he can't be ridden on anything harder than dirt. He's ELEVEN. A draft should, with luck, still be working happily til he's at least 20. And *that* is why I just cannot bring myself to sell Poppy. I'd love for him to go to someone like Daun, but odds are, he'd end up downtown.