From Whiskey Ranch-Horse’s secret stash
A ways back, one night me and my horse-buddies Original Coors and Coors Light overheard the continual commotion of people-babble echoin and carryin across the County Island and disturbin our peace. The Coors brothers claimed it was the sound of a horse auction and of horses bein run through it. And specifically the sound of a “halter horse” auction. Well, that spurred another commotion amongst ourselves, or among my own sane self and their disreputable selves. Because what in the ranch-world would a halter horse be other than a horse that wears a halter, and there ain’t one thing special about that. The Coors brothers claimed it was “a thing.” I remember it well —
I raised my head in the general direction of all the commotion, and indicated to my horse compadres that it reminded me of the sounds of a ranch auction, only ranch auctions was held durin proper daylight hours and without so much whoop-dee-do. I should know, as I’d been run through enough of ‘em before my hooves landed here. Also, as far as I know, there ain’t not even one proper ranch that falls within my earshot on the whole, entire County Island, so surely it wasn’t a ranch horse auction.
Coors and Coors Light pricked their Ayrab-horse ears, too, and then they gave each other the Ayrab hairy eyeball and shook their heads and blew through their nostrils. Coors Light said it was a Ayrab halter horse auction. I reckon if anyhorse would know if a thing pertained to Ayrabs, it’d be a pair of Ayrabs.
But a halter horse auction? That’d be ridiculous. Even for Ayrabs.
Every horse has got a halter. The one I got now’s black with some kinda brown and colory design thing on it but it’s all grown kinda dirty and worn-like on account of bein a useful thing, which there ain’t no shame in, not a halter nor the horse it’s on. And there ain’t nothin special nor useful about your ability to have your halter strapped around your head, much less to get a bunch of people to prattle on and on about ya all danged night long at an auction…
And I thusly determined that —
The next time I get rode along the County Island trail that goes past the spread where they keep all the fanciest, spindliest Ayrabs, which ain’t nothin like the two furry, fat fellas I’m stuck with, I plan to ask whichever horse is turned out in the turnout pen if he’s ever heard of a halter horse or a halter auction. I’d bet my own bucket on it there ain’t no such thing.
That day came sooner than expected.
The next time I got rode by the bucket gal around the road to where the pranciest Ayrabs I’d ever met lived (although I only really knew my own two well enough to compare ‘em to, and my two were prancy enough), I saw some of young’uns turned out in the pen out front. Instead of bein wild and fuzzy all over like a newly weaned spitfire of any horse-breed should be, they was shaved clean all around their heads, ears, and necks with a hard stop where their necks met their fat lil fuzzy bodies. Like maybe the clippers broke right there in a line, the same, on all of ’em.
“What happened to you?” I softly blew out my nostrils at ’em and used my best ranch manners not to laugh.
What I thought I heard ’em say, all like in a chorus, was, “We wore halters at the big horse show in town cuz we’re special halter babies!!!!”
Now in my day, a youngster had to put in a lot of hard work, for at least a couple people-years, before anyone called him special, if at all. I didn’t want to call them a special kind of stupid out loud, on account of I was raised right, but things like that are entirely OK to think inside your own horse-thoughts, and so I did.
What I said was, “You did what now?”
And then I done learned a lot about it in the way only excitable weanlins can tell a tale.
Short-rundown version: “We wear halters and we prance and we blow our nostrils!! Sometimes we walk on our hind legs and wave our front legs waaaay high, and we squeal and then the men with the puffy hair in the suits go jerk jerk jerk on our lead chains and then the people around us go WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP and we dance some more, and then we run run run at the end of the chain, and then we’re done!! They shave us so everybody can see how pretty we are!!! And the prettiest ones get to wear great big ribbons!!!!! And then that’s it!!!!!!”
Me to my own self, inside my private thoughts: Whatever happened to “pretty is as pretty does”?
What I said was, “Well, I’ll be.”
And truthfully, I was.
Done bein there, that is.
Clearly they’d been weaned on some loco weed.
A short spell later, I found myself stayin at the prancin barn where the prancin lady lives and where Coors Light goes to prance. We go there sometimes when the bucket gal and carrot guy “take a vacation.” And I was startin to feel like maybe I owed ‘em all an apology for makin such terrible fun of prancin, if there was any truth at all to what the half-shaved weanlins had said about the halters and their prancin. Halter horse prancin sounded far worse than the prancin I’d seen done by Coors Light and his kind.
So I asked one of the prancy Ayrabs at the prancin lady’s barn about it, and she said, generally: “Oh yeah, we do halter too when we’re not doing dressage [horse note: which means prancin] or jumping, but we call it ‘sport horse in hand.’ Because we’re sporty and useful Arabians, not like those Arabians.”
I never knew there was horse-prejudice among the Ayrabs themselves.
Kindly note I kept my opinions to myself and remained a polite listener, with nice forward-pricked ears. He told me that the “S.H.I.H.” Ayrabs (I really thought he was goin for another four-letter word that begins with “SHI”) was workmanlike and proper. They wore proper leather halters and leads, not chains, and no “makeup” nor funny clip jobs. And they kept all four hooves on the ground unless they was asked to trot out, in which case they was expected to show off a proper ground-coverin trot and not wave any hooves nor legs around unduly. They was graded on good conformation for bein a usin horse — I guess as far as Ayrabs go. And the people wore neat and clean barn clothes and solid footwear to protect their soft feet, with no poofy-haired men nor women nor see-quins nor ball gowns. But the goal was still to get to wear a great big ribbon at the end. By then, I’d learned more than enough. That sounded near practical to me, as far as such County Island things go, which ain’t far. So I knew I had to stop listenin lest I lose every last shred of sense I had.
Back at our own lil horse-corral at home after the “people vacation,” I chanced to see one of the good western-broke Quarter Horses who lives a couple spreads over from us, as he was bein rode by with his good western rider at a respectable walk. I was grateful for the chance to talk to a fellow solid citizen about all the halter nonsense I’d heard. I expected us to commiserate over it.
But then he dropped a bomb straight on my bombproof head.
He said, “Oh yeah, I was a halter baby myself. They showed me at the world.”
At the world? Excuse me, you mean they showed you wearin a halter everywhere at every ranch there is? I had no time for such nonsense.
So I pinned my horse-ears, turned my butt to him, and walked as far away from the fence line as I could get.
He whinnied after me as his rider made to walk off, “You should go talk to the Saddlebreds two roads over about Saddlebred halter!”
I turned and fixed him with a hard gaze that said, “No thank you, son.”
There are some things a ranch horse ain’t meant to know.
County Island 