What are some of your experiences growing up with horses?

I had some thinking to do on this one! I LOVE this question, but trying to pick out one story was soooo hard.

I was born & raised in western Oregon where there are a lot of mountains. We were out helping a guy gather cattle to be doctored, sorted & shipped. We had been riding all day, it was hot, our horses were lathered & we were all tired. I was maybe 15 & I was riding an unfamiliar horse grandad told me to take. We had all split up & I had just come around the side of this hill & this horse goes to prancing & blowing & crow hopping. I'm looking around thinking bobcat or ??? I pull the horse in a few tight circles & over & under him to get him moving just in case it is. We start dancing down this cow trail & I catch the unmistakable smell of something dead. We keep moving & the smell gets worse & you can hear a loud humming. The horse is still dancing around & I am trying to find out where the smell is coming from. Found it! about 20 yards to the east was a dead steer & this thing was thick with maggots & that was where the humming was coming from. I HATE HATE HATE maggots. The sight of them makes me literally gag if not throw up & this thing was THICK with them. The horse bolted & to keep him from running over the side of the hill, I turned him around & we headed back to at least tell dad or the owner, so they weren't wondering when the count was off. Back at the corrals, I'm telling dad about the steer & he asked why I didn't get off the horse & at least pull the ear tag & bring it back.

I explained about the maggots & how the horse was acting, but that didn't matter. Dad made me mount up & go back up there. I was throwing up all the way back up to where this freaking steer was. When we are out like that, we put the bridles on over the halters, then just dally the lead rope around the horn. We use regular roping reins & not split reins. I dismounted a very unhappy horse, took the lead rope down & with the dry heaves I fight to get this horse over to this dead steer. I use a stick to clear the maggots off the head, find the ear tag (heave, heave, heave) my arm is being pulled from the socket by this very uncooperative horse & I reach down, grab the ear tag & pull. I feel it give, unfortunately what gave was where the skull connected to the neck!!! I let go, the skull goes flying at the uncooperative horse, I am gagging & freaking out at the thought of maggots touching me, the horse is backing up at a speed that would put most professional calf roping horses to shame & I am hanging on for dear life. When he finally stops, I tie his worthless hide to a tree & have to walk back over & fight the maggots for a damn ear tag. (where were the rubber gloves & purell hand sanitizer when you need them???).

Needless to say, I got the ear tag, found a creek to wash off in & so the horse could get a drink then we headed back.

After ALL of that, when we got back, dad said that they didn't need the ear tag because it wasn't the owners steer, because he checked off all of his tags while I was gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I guess that wasn't exactly a horse story but it was one of those I REMEMBER WHEN.... stories.

Great Times....Great Times....

Anyone ever get this one???

example: we are working cattle, you are in the corral, on foot pushing them to the sorting gate or squeeze chute. One fiesty bovine decides it would be fun to turn & charge you. You quickly notice that yelling & waving your arms is not doing it, so you head for the fence & climb just as the bovine's head crashes into the fence where you had been standing. Then you hear, "Get off the fence they aren't going to hurt you!" You look around & find that it is coming from some smart a** who is ALSO standing on the fence. I promptly showed them my middle finger (as long as it wasn't my dad or grandad)!!!!

John: Then I'll just bet you know my cousin!!! "The Kamikaze Kid" a.k.a Rob Smets. Between you & me, my favorite bull fighter of ALL time is Wick Peth though.....

Actually, I have a story about a time when we were helping Rob when he first decided to run some Borba cows & calves. Let's just say I did NOT make it up the fence that time & I see why the Spanish kill the bulls after a fight!!!! Lucky for me this was only a calf, maybe 300 lbs. but I think he had a future in the arena!!!!! HA HA HA!!!!

Will do John! You know I tried the barrel out one time. I was a lot younger & Rob was having fun day at his place, trying out a pen of bulls he had. Back in the days of Jim Sharp & of course Lane. In fact they & Cody Lambert were there. Anyway, Rob kept the bull at the barrel & I got my bell rung real good, but Rob said I did good. I stayed in position, I didn't throw up & I didn't scream. I told him, maybe so, but if you had not stopped I would have peed my pants!!! HA HA HA!!!

I have so so many stories about the horse side of my life.

I live on a huge property in Queensland and grew up around horses [there has never been a time when there has been less than 10 horses on the property]. The first time I rode a horse was when I was only a few weeks old. I got my first horse when I was 3. I used to lay on the gound with him and roll around in the sun. We sold him and got a cute grey pony called Misty Moon and an odd little taffy mare called Taffy. I stopped riding them and rode my cousins pony Cindy, who I was mustering with on the range and she jumped a log on a steep slope and gave me a HUGE bruise from the saddle horn, then straight afterwards she ran me through a prickly bush. She died a few years ago and now I have another horse, a quarter horse mare called CC Conchitas Raindancer. She is so bloody sour but is really beautiful. I was galloping her down our airstrip and she started spinning all of a sudden and I fell off and couldn't sit down properly on my butt for ages. lol. Then I was riding her in a big open paddock when she took of and ran me through the only tree in the whole paddock.lol. Then she got flogged by my brother for almost throwing him off [ now thats not funny]. She pigroots like a beauty. Maybe I should sell her for a saddlebronc lol. Thats all im goin to write cos this will fill up the whole page.

Hmmmmmm wow what a great question i would have to say for me any horseback riding experience is a good one no matte rif it involves a wreck or a perfect ride. Scarriest moment wuld have to be when my old appy Biscuit threw me off. We were ridign down a friends driveway and he was his usual hyper silly lil self. I was in my english saddle and had the stirrups jerked up as high as they would go b/c on ocassion I'll ride like I'm exercising a TB b/c it strenghtens the legs. Anyway here we are riding down the driveway that we have been down thousands of times before and all of a sudden this school bus which has been there all those other times, grows teeth and eyes and apparently growls at Biscuit cause he boogered form here to timbuckto! Now Biscuit was 15.3 hh nd here I am in this exercising position... standing in the stirrups with my a** a good oh 12 inches from the saddle and he starts crow hopping and bucking. I come off of him and land on a concrete driveway on my lower back then get rolled up onto my shoulders and neck when he runs over top of me. I lay there squalling like a baby not able to feel my legs or move and Biscuit oh so loyal horse he is high tails it for home. Thankfully after about 10 min the feeling returned to my legs and I was able to crawl to a tree pull myself up and hobble back home to find Biscuit stanf\ding by the gate munching on my moms flowers... 2 compressed discs later I still ride but not him, he's now doing hunt seat with an 11 year odl girl. Best moment eould have to be 6-25-1999 when i cam home late from a party and looked out in the barn to see that my mare was foaling out! Big Girl was a bit of a dunce when it came to foaling and always would lay with her back end up against either a wall or gate and basically push the foal into a wall. This time she was pushing her baby up unde rthe gate to my hay storage. I had to ctually help deliver the foal and pull her out of my mare b/c she would have gotten hung up in that gate. It was sooooo awesome to help bring a new lil life into the world. I almost felt liek she was my daughter and joking say she is lol. she's abut to make me a grandma at the age of 25 though! Bailey is due to foal in just a few weeks! can't wait to see that baby... maybe I'll be able to help deliver this one too!

Well, let's see - I grew up in the suburbs. I didn't start riding really until high school. I had gone to summer camps the two years before, but Dad never really thought that I was all that into horses until I was trying to figure out how my allowance could pay for lessons.

So, I started lessons at the stables near me and then started biking there to clean stalls because my mom didn't want to drive me there. She would pick me up.

I was the only one who couldn't afford a horse, so when we spent our summers there all day, I 'owned' a horse named Clorox....she was clear....and often somehow to lame to be ridden. We would talk about her like she was real - back in the back paddock and I would talk about feeding her and taking care of an abcess or other lameness (it was a lot easier than attempting to ride a 'clear horse').

So that was my younger days with horses - other than that, I got the horses straight off the track to ride, or fresh from being broke - since I was the most experienced rider without a horse. I remember a huge 17.2HH thoroughbred that came from the track. They put him out in a small paddock at first and he was all confused because he had spent his entire life, or most of it, in a stall. Then he wanted to sniff at the minis next door and angled his huge neck over the fence-got zapped by the electric fence and got all confused. Did it a few more times. Then we tacked him up and they told me to get up on him. I was nervous, but that wouldn't stop me. Walk, trot - then they want a canter?!? He's an ex race horse! So we are at the top of the arena - which is on a slight grade, so we are about to go down hill and I ask him to canter, which he does readily - but not a canter, a lope. I was so surprised - this huge race horse was loping around the ring like he was out for a Sunday stroll. No wonder he didn't make it on the track.

Then there was Annie Star Trek - well, Annie was maybe 15HH and loved to run. So she was injected and raced and injected and raced - until she has so many chips in her knees all she could do was Western pleasure....but...no hand, no leg. her mouth was so sensitive, she would practically do a sliding stop for you- but really wasn't in shape for reining or anything and we didn't have that much Western where I grew up anyway. So the experienced riders like me rode her around.

Well, since Annie couldn't race - breeding her was just a swell idea. Breeding her for free (or practically free) to a stallion that didn't make it at the track was an even better idea, because breeding two non-winners is sure to get a winner.....

Well Annie must have had a chat with her daughter, because that little filly would run at the track at home, but when they took her to the local racetrack to practice - she refused to break out of a trot. When she got home, this girl who thought she knew more than she did turned her off to jumping. Annie Chips (the daughter) would swish her tail and shake her head if she thought you were aiming her for a jump. Bucking would follow - that filly had an opinion. Another Western pleasure thoroughbred.

One of my favorite stories was when I was about 10 or 11. I was at my grannys house and my prissyassed cousin came over. She was the cheerleader type and OMG if she ever got dirty she was freaking out. Well I was always dirty from riding or playing with my dogs or just whatever since I was always a country girl and didnt even care what anyone thought. Well I talked her into riding with me that day. My granny had a horse that was my moms when she was a kid and he was so old he probalby farted dust so my cousin rode him since she was scared half to death. I got her talked into ridin in the arena with me and we got to the far end and I said "lets race" and both her horse and my pony took off for the front of the arena full blast, well, her horse decided that he was gonna fling her like a sling shot and bucked her off face first in the dirt. She had braces at the time and all she did was get up and start spitting dirt and it was caked in her braces. She cried like a baby (she was like 15) and ran to the house. I loved it cuz she was such a priss!!

One of the funniest things that happened was during a HUS class. My gelding & I were doing well all summer in the huntseat classes. We were doing rail work & a little boy was near the fence eating blue cotton candy. As , I rode by at a trot my gelding stole the cotton candy. The little boy was screaming " Mommy that horse stole my cotton candy." We didn't place that day & I rode my horse out of the arena with his nose covered in blue.

A horse of my uncles ran off with my sister. The Horse just came to a stop on the upside of a hill. She doesn't like to ride Horses now. Actually she has had this happen to her a few times.

My ponies and I used to go for sleepovers at my friend's house - her parents owned a riding school, we became firm friends through Pony Club and whichever pony I had at the time, we spent many a summer week staying with them. On more than one occasion, we sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night, in our PJs, got the ponies out of their stables and went for a gallop in the dark - with no tack, no riding hats, just pyjamas, and a headcollar on the ponies. I shudder to think how badly wrong it could've gone - but luckily it never did! And anyone who says ponies can't see in the dark really needs to gallop round a hay field at 1am!

I have had so many wonderful experiences and spirit touching moment with the wonderful critures that are horses!

My most remembered horse memory was when I was 13 years old, I started volunteering at Therapeutic Horemanship program.

The stable and the horses were fancy and beautiful.

The first volunteer training I got to meet all the horses, I wasn't around horses allot, the sound of them sneezing made me jump!

I instantly feel in love with a x-race horse chestnut mare, named Princess Ellie.

She nip at times, but for some reason I was drawn to her, she had really big brown eyes, and she was really huge stood at about 18 hands.

Most people who first looked at her was like oh she really big, im not gonna get close to her.

But when we were being introduced to all the horses I went over and started to rub the center of her face where her white blaze was.

She just started close her eyes, and the instructor of the program, pulled me aside and told me Ellie had never done that with anyone before she usually tried to nip at anyone who passed to close to her stall.

Than we went along with the introduction of all the horses and Ellie just watched me the whole from her stall, she watched me look at the other horses and when i petted another horse she would whinnie.

I ended up going back to her stall every 4 days I would go to the stable to work with the disabled students, I instantly clicked with that horse, she would sometimes nip the able-bodied students and some of the other volunteer who would rid her.

After about 2 months into the riding season, they let me switch form a quarter horse gelding to Ellie because she just would cooperate with another other riders.

When the volunteers got to go on trial rides after we were done with working for the day, we would go to ride in groups of 4-8 and Ellie and I would just ride in front of everyone else, because most of the volunteer couldn't trot, Ellie actually tought me how to trot.

I had no idea how to trot, from what I remember it was the third or forth trail ride she started to prance and I tought she was trying to show off but one of my friends who was also a volunteer told em Oh you never told me you know how to trot.

I had no idea but I was mostly proud of Ellie, she was an amazing horse!

I volunteered at that stable until I was 34, sadly Ellie passed on when I was 31.

After Ellie was gone I really didn't want to be there anymore, but I stayed for, only 2 and half more years and I decided I would move to Maryland ( the stable was in North Carolina).

I have over 200 pictures of her and I look at them mostly everyday, I have my own horses now.

Also I volunteer with my daughter at a therapeutic horsemanship program here in Maryland, and have lost 2 horses in this program but still hanging on!

But I will never ever forget the impact Princess Ellie had on my life!

one day when i was fourteen i thought i was big enough to go rope in the bull by myself.so i went out to the barn grabbed my favorite saddle(a 1930s garcia floral with a widowmaker swell)bridled and saddled up "joe" a big 16 hand quarter,grabbed my new ranch rope(you can guess where this is going)and set out to bring in the big 1200 pound angus bull.it all started out just as planned untill the bull decided it wasnt time to go into the pen,(good thing i brought the rope)threw the loop and had my catch,dallied up and heeled around to drag him into the pen,just then a gust of wind came up and blew the gate into the wrong side of joe,joe wheeled around with his nose in the dirt just under the rope like a big winch locking me in the saddle and also locking the dallie,two turns later he lost his footing and landed on his side with me safely seat belted into the saddle via the widowmaker swells,when i looked up the bull(who looked quite amused at this simpleton)and he just stood there.help finaly arrived a few minutes later(after they wiped the tears out of their eyes from laughing so hard).in all my young bravado i made one big mistake,

wrong pen!

the story still graces the table every once in a while

usually during a date.

blue sage:i am a pro rodeo barrelman and i used to be a bullfighter,i cant run as fast anymore and i got tired of getting helped over the fence by bulls so i carry my "clown lounge"with me in the arena.

edit:for those too young to know what a "widowmaker" swell is,it is a undercut swell that is 14"+ wide that is used for green horses and keeps your knees locked in so well you sometimes cant get out of the saddle if the horse rears over on you,hence the name "widowmaker".also an old cowboy term for a slick fork saddle with a brass saddle horn is called a castrator.

yeh i know rob,next time you see him tell him J.D. from calhan says hi!i am a traditional barrelman(not a clown) i prefer to be there for the riders safety like the old time barrelmen.