The Best Horse In the World

I found a couple places to horseback ride in the Monterey area and am hoping I can get onto a horse soon. JC and I were supposed to go to a San Francisco Giants-Mets game on my birthday next weekend, but I really want to go riding. We'll see. I miss being around horses so much. The horse that is in all those pictures in my last post is a horse that came to the ranch during my first winter out there. The ranch buys all its horses from auction and they often come to the ranch in less than perfect conditions. This horse, who I named Orangejello or Jello for short, was a real headcase. He clearly had suffered a pretty serious case of neglect, was pretty skinny and had the permanent mark of a halter on his head and was very head shy (did not like his head or ears touched at all). We think someone just put the halter on and left him out there. It kills me the way some people treat animals.

Anyway, when spring finally arrives at the Ranch there is sooo much stuff to do. We have to fix fence, clear trail, fix saddles, shoe and vaccinate the horses and all that. Well, I will never forget when Jello became my horse. On shoeing day, we have to tie all the horses up along the fenceline inside the corral. Jello untied himself about 4 times and was causing all kinds of trouble. By the end of the day they just had to turn him loose in the round pen. My boss pointed at him and just asked, “you want him?” Now how it works at the Ranch is the wranglers always end up with all the horses we can’t put guests on. Most of the “best of the worst” are already taken by the veteran wranglers. I wasn’t about to turn away what looked like a perfectly sound and athletic-looking horse.

See how athletic (if not always a little on the skinny side)?

So I took on Jello as my horse for the summer. He had a host of problems aside from his ability to untie himself and his issues with having his head and ears touched. He was a HUGE scaredy cat. He’d never seen buffalo or elk before (which we see ALL the time on rides). He’d never crossed water, never opened or closed a gate before, never been ridden bareback, never swam in the water. He was afraid of everything! Scary looking rocks, scary looking logs, scary looking holes in the ground. He was a serious head case. My kids (the teenagers I took out) took to calling him “Ronald” (like Ron Weasley from Harry Potter) ‘cos he was a redhead and a big scaredy cat. I just loved him to death though! I spent HOURS working with him on my lunch break, after work, on my day off. By the end of 2 years I turned him into a helluva trail horse and was so sad to leave him.

A sad, sad day...my last ever ride on him

I got to reunite with him briefly in 2008 on a drive cross-country and then again last year when I was out in Wyoming for my sister’s wedding. Unfortunately, that was the last time I ever saw him and, sadly, the last time I ever will. He had some issues with his new rider last summer and had a couple accidents and the Ranch deemed him a ‘dangerous horse’ and ‘liability’. So they sold him : ( . It makes me unbelievably sad. He taught me how to be a better rider and I’m so proud of what a great trail horse I turned him into. I know it’s silly, but I wanted to buy him one day. I hope he’s alive and happy wherever he is and has a new owner who is as patient with him as I was and appreciates what an awesome horse he is. He is a big scaredy cat, but if you build up a relationship with him he will do WHATEVER you ask him to. And believe me on the teen ride, I made him do some pretty crazy things! We race through the water, go swimming bareback, ride along cliffs like this, climb HUGE vertical mountains, go down crazy inclines. And if he trusts you, he’ll do it all and more. I know it’s stupid, but I feel like I let him down ‘cos I wasn’t there to vouch for him. If I were still there and continued to ride him I know they never would have gotten rid of him.

I miss you buddy! and hope you are fat and happy wherever you are!