The Wild Weasel Hunt
© Ken Harris 2008
We rode in the Rio Hondo a lot back in the late 1950s, before the river became a huge, concrete drainage ditch. Then the riverbed had nice, deep sand. If either Sheba or Legend had eaten too many oats for breakfast and yearned to be wild and free, a brisk, hundred-yard canter through deep sand would adjust his or her attitude. Too many oats have much the same effect on horses that too much single malt has on humans.
On this particular morning I was riding Sheba and Joanne was riding Legend. As we drowsily plodded through the river sand in the morning sun, a weasel suddenly ran in front of us, gasped, and frantically darted about looking for a hole. We had accidentally gotten too close to him. I don’t know whether it was the human smell, the horse smell, or an unpleasant combination of both, but he wanted to put as much distance as he could between us and him -- if he could only remember where his hole was. As he ran, Sheba caught sight of him and took off in hot pursuit. Something to stomp, oh joy, oh bliss. I literally went along for the ride. With a hip hooray and a what the hey, I went wild weasel hunting with Sheba.
Joanne and Legend joined the chase. That poor weasel ran from bush to bush for five minutes, looking for his personal bush with his personal bolt hole while we chased furiously. When I say “we” I mean Joanne and Sheba. Legend was typically clueless, had no idea what we were chasing. She never saw the weasel. All she knew was Joanne was for some reason asking her to go very fast and move in several different directions at once. I had no control over Sheba, so I went where she did feeling lucky not to continue heading west while she suddenly wheeled to the south. Sheba was agile. Really, really agile. I stayed on her back only because I maintained a death grip around her middle. I may have even had my feet crossed underneath her belly.
The hunt came out in the very best way possible. Nothing happened. The weasel survived to tell his grandchildren about his memorable day in the Rio Hondo river bed. Neither horse nor rider broke a leg, so we didn’t have to shoot anybody. It was a fine hunt.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
How I Learned to Ride Horses
How I Learned to Ride Horses
©Ken Harris 2008
It was 1955. I had decided that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Joanne Heyser, even though it meant I was going to have to learn to ride a horse. I had never ridden much.
I started with Sheba, The Horse With The History. At first Joanne did all the saddling and bridling. Sheba, all 14 hands 2 inches of her, knew a lot about riding and I knew nothing. Fortunately for me she had a kindly disposition.
On weekends I would drive from Riverside to El Monte and spend the weekend with the Heyser family. Each afternoon Sheba took me out for a ride and brought me back. The took great care that I didn’t fall off. She had to because there were so many things I didn't know.
I didn't know, for instance, that you don’t sit in a saddle. You stand in a saddle with the balls of your feet in the stirrups and your weight on your heels. This keeps you from rubbing a large blister at the base of your spine. I know that now.
Also, when you're in the saddle, if it feels like you are sitting (oops, standing) up straight, you aren’t. You stick your chest out and arch your back until it feels like you’re doing a swan dive. This keeps you from developing blisters in your thighs. I know that now.
Finally, you point your toes out when you stand in the saddle. This keeps you from developing blisters on the inside of your knees. I know that now.
I was no challenge for Sheba. She dozed through our excursions. My first clue was her ears. A horse’s ears point to whatever she’s looking at. Sheba’s ears flopped back and forth as we walked and her eyes were closed. She didn’t actually snore, but she was sound asleep. Once she stumbled over a cigarette butt.
Gradually, as Joanne and I rode to more interesting places, Sheba began to stay awake. I realized that I had passed some sort of milestone when she actually crow-hopped a little bit with me. Not enough to dislodge me; just enough to register her displeasure with something I had done. That meant that she felt I had progressed enough to be reprimanded for my shortcomings.
After that, I began riding Legend, the Horse With The Problem, from time to time. “What a thrill,” I thought at the time. And, as it turned out, there were many thrills in the ensuing years.
©Ken Harris 2008
It was 1955. I had decided that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Joanne Heyser, even though it meant I was going to have to learn to ride a horse. I had never ridden much.
I started with Sheba, The Horse With The History. At first Joanne did all the saddling and bridling. Sheba, all 14 hands 2 inches of her, knew a lot about riding and I knew nothing. Fortunately for me she had a kindly disposition.
On weekends I would drive from Riverside to El Monte and spend the weekend with the Heyser family. Each afternoon Sheba took me out for a ride and brought me back. The took great care that I didn’t fall off. She had to because there were so many things I didn't know.
I didn't know, for instance, that you don’t sit in a saddle. You stand in a saddle with the balls of your feet in the stirrups and your weight on your heels. This keeps you from rubbing a large blister at the base of your spine. I know that now.
Also, when you're in the saddle, if it feels like you are sitting (oops, standing) up straight, you aren’t. You stick your chest out and arch your back until it feels like you’re doing a swan dive. This keeps you from developing blisters in your thighs. I know that now.
Finally, you point your toes out when you stand in the saddle. This keeps you from developing blisters on the inside of your knees. I know that now.
I was no challenge for Sheba. She dozed through our excursions. My first clue was her ears. A horse’s ears point to whatever she’s looking at. Sheba’s ears flopped back and forth as we walked and her eyes were closed. She didn’t actually snore, but she was sound asleep. Once she stumbled over a cigarette butt.
Gradually, as Joanne and I rode to more interesting places, Sheba began to stay awake. I realized that I had passed some sort of milestone when she actually crow-hopped a little bit with me. Not enough to dislodge me; just enough to register her displeasure with something I had done. That meant that she felt I had progressed enough to be reprimanded for my shortcomings.
After that, I began riding Legend, the Horse With The Problem, from time to time. “What a thrill,” I thought at the time. And, as it turned out, there were many thrills in the ensuing years.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Legend, the Horse with the Problem
Legend, the Horse with the Problem
Copyright Ken Harris 2009
If Sheba was The Horse with The History but no one knew what it was, Legend was The Horse with The Problem that everyone knew about. She was antisocial. In spades, vulnerable, doubled and re-doubled.
There is some sort of madness that drives horse owners to accumulate more horses than they need. The Heyser family had one person in the family who rode, Joanne. It stood to reason that they needed two horses.
That was where Legend came into the picture. Joanne’s parents, Sid and Esther Heyser, decided that it would be a good thing to get their daughter a colt. It would keep her out of trouble and give her something to do after school besides think about boys. They could learn about horse training together.
A little vocabulary here before we go on. All horse-babies are foals. A foal is either a colt (male) or a filly (female). At some time early in a colt’s career, its owner decides whether he will ever be used for stud purposes. If not, then his testicles are neither useful nor decorative and are therefore removed. And that’s how colts become geldings. Otherwise, they remain horses until they are actively put to stud, at which time they become stallions. Stallions are chock-a-block full of hormones and it’s not safe to take liberties with them. Fillies remain so until around four, at which time they become mares.
Joanne’s parents “commissioned” a foal by an Arab stallion named Khazel out of a grade mare named Lady. “Grade” means “mixed-blood.” She was half Arab, half American Saddle Bred. There was nothing grade about Khazel, though. He was by Abu Farwa out of Kharafia. We are not just talking blue blood here, folks; Abu Farwa bled turquoise, azure, cobalt, Prussian, you name it, it was blue. Lineage doesn’t make much difference to a horse, but to the horse’s owner the longer the pedigree, the better.
Louie and Nellie Goldfarb, the husband and wife couple managing the ranch where Legend was born, were in the midst of a domestic dispute that eventually led to their divorce. Louie didn’t like Arab horses, he didn’t like the ranch and he didn’t like Nellie. Not only that, Louie didn’t apparently see much virtue in work. According to what Joanne told me, Louie was supposed to feed the colts, and make sure they were halter broken and semi-civilized. Louie fed, and that was it. Nellie worked off the ranch as many ranch people, maybe even most of them, have to do. She caught up with her ranch work in her off hours.
Eventually, when Joanne decided to work with Legend a little bit, she found a filly untouched by human hands. She couldn't lead the foal, couldn't even get near her. She brought in a trainer who halter broke the filly in one hour. It was an intense hour, but the deed was done.
It became apparent that Louie wasn’t doing his job. There’s nothing a person who’s not doing their job hates more than having people know about it. So Louie decided that he would prove that this filly, Legend, had been ruined by the trainer who had spent an hour halter breaking her. Louie didn’t feed her. He threw things at her. He saw to it that Legend developed a genuinely bad attitude.
When Joanne picked her up to take her home she was stunted and had a pot belly. And she was very antisocial. She tried to bite and kick people and sometimes succeeded. She motivated Joanne’s brother, Fritz, to abandon the corral by leaping over the top rail. He later always claimed that the principal thing he admired about the French was that they ate horses.
Come to think of it, Joanne’s sister Audrey almost suffered a similar fate. Neither of them would willingly go out and try to do something with Legend. Even Joanne felt the force of her hooves and it became apparent that this girl who had never trained a horse was not going to succeed with this horse who had never been trained.
Another trainer “green broke” the filly so that she could at least begin her Horse 101 lessons. It fell to Joanne and Sheba to educate Legend further.
Sheba was outright mean to Legend and put up with no crap whatever. The filly learned her lessons or paid with her hide. But when turned into pasture, Sheba put Legend into an open corral. Then, while she slept, Sheba stood guard at the front gate, her front legs astraddle the sleeping filly, and protected the filly from other horses with hoof and tooth. Sheba could brutalize Legend, but nobody else better try.
When I first started hanging out with Joanne, she considered it her duty to teach me to ride. But I also heard all these stories about Legend, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to even be in the same county with her. Not to worry, said she. She would ride Legend, and I would get to ride Sheba. It would be like riding a lawn chair.
Copyright Ken Harris 2009
If Sheba was The Horse with The History but no one knew what it was, Legend was The Horse with The Problem that everyone knew about. She was antisocial. In spades, vulnerable, doubled and re-doubled.
There is some sort of madness that drives horse owners to accumulate more horses than they need. The Heyser family had one person in the family who rode, Joanne. It stood to reason that they needed two horses.
That was where Legend came into the picture. Joanne’s parents, Sid and Esther Heyser, decided that it would be a good thing to get their daughter a colt. It would keep her out of trouble and give her something to do after school besides think about boys. They could learn about horse training together.
A little vocabulary here before we go on. All horse-babies are foals. A foal is either a colt (male) or a filly (female). At some time early in a colt’s career, its owner decides whether he will ever be used for stud purposes. If not, then his testicles are neither useful nor decorative and are therefore removed. And that’s how colts become geldings. Otherwise, they remain horses until they are actively put to stud, at which time they become stallions. Stallions are chock-a-block full of hormones and it’s not safe to take liberties with them. Fillies remain so until around four, at which time they become mares.
Joanne’s parents “commissioned” a foal by an Arab stallion named Khazel out of a grade mare named Lady. “Grade” means “mixed-blood.” She was half Arab, half American Saddle Bred. There was nothing grade about Khazel, though. He was by Abu Farwa out of Kharafia. We are not just talking blue blood here, folks; Abu Farwa bled turquoise, azure, cobalt, Prussian, you name it, it was blue. Lineage doesn’t make much difference to a horse, but to the horse’s owner the longer the pedigree, the better.
Louie and Nellie Goldfarb, the husband and wife couple managing the ranch where Legend was born, were in the midst of a domestic dispute that eventually led to their divorce. Louie didn’t like Arab horses, he didn’t like the ranch and he didn’t like Nellie. Not only that, Louie didn’t apparently see much virtue in work. According to what Joanne told me, Louie was supposed to feed the colts, and make sure they were halter broken and semi-civilized. Louie fed, and that was it. Nellie worked off the ranch as many ranch people, maybe even most of them, have to do. She caught up with her ranch work in her off hours.
Eventually, when Joanne decided to work with Legend a little bit, she found a filly untouched by human hands. She couldn't lead the foal, couldn't even get near her. She brought in a trainer who halter broke the filly in one hour. It was an intense hour, but the deed was done.
It became apparent that Louie wasn’t doing his job. There’s nothing a person who’s not doing their job hates more than having people know about it. So Louie decided that he would prove that this filly, Legend, had been ruined by the trainer who had spent an hour halter breaking her. Louie didn’t feed her. He threw things at her. He saw to it that Legend developed a genuinely bad attitude.
When Joanne picked her up to take her home she was stunted and had a pot belly. And she was very antisocial. She tried to bite and kick people and sometimes succeeded. She motivated Joanne’s brother, Fritz, to abandon the corral by leaping over the top rail. He later always claimed that the principal thing he admired about the French was that they ate horses.
Come to think of it, Joanne’s sister Audrey almost suffered a similar fate. Neither of them would willingly go out and try to do something with Legend. Even Joanne felt the force of her hooves and it became apparent that this girl who had never trained a horse was not going to succeed with this horse who had never been trained.
Another trainer “green broke” the filly so that she could at least begin her Horse 101 lessons. It fell to Joanne and Sheba to educate Legend further.
Sheba was outright mean to Legend and put up with no crap whatever. The filly learned her lessons or paid with her hide. But when turned into pasture, Sheba put Legend into an open corral. Then, while she slept, Sheba stood guard at the front gate, her front legs astraddle the sleeping filly, and protected the filly from other horses with hoof and tooth. Sheba could brutalize Legend, but nobody else better try.
When I first started hanging out with Joanne, she considered it her duty to teach me to ride. But I also heard all these stories about Legend, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to even be in the same county with her. Not to worry, said she. She would ride Legend, and I would get to ride Sheba. It would be like riding a lawn chair.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Sheba, the Horse with a History
Sheba, the Horse With a History
©Ken Harris, 2009
Growing a mane and tail were beyond me, so I set about learning to ride. Sheba taught me, so it is fitting that I start my tale with her. Without Sheba there would have been no Ken and Legend. Well, yes there would have been individually, but not together as the eminently defeatable team we became.
Sheba, a small, refined Arab mare, was a horse with a history. Unfortunately, nobody knew what that history was. We never found out.
Joanne claims she was born to ride horses. She and her older sister, Audrey, spent their summers on the family mining claim on Paiute Mountain in California’s southern Sierra Nevadas. Whenever the two girls found a horse minding its own business in a nearby meadow, they would attempt to catch and ride him. They always let him go. It wasn’t really horse stealing. It was more of a catch-and-release program.
During the winter months the family lived in East Los Angeles and Joanne rented horses from nearby stables with her babysitting money and she worked one summer at a camp as a counselor. She got to ride there.
But it was not quite the same thing as owning her own horse. It wasn’t even close. And so, one day in 1951 when Joanne was 17, her parents moved from East Los Angeles to El Monte, to a nice house on a large lot with a repairable barn and room for a corral for a horse. And Sheba came into her life. Drumroll here.
A friend of a friend of Joanne’s sister, Audrey, had a horse. She (call her Jane Doe) and her husband (but of course, John) were separating, and the horse had to go. Joanne’s mother, Esther, contacted John who told her, “It’s this way. We’re splitting the sheets and the horse has to go. If you will give her a good home, she’s yours.” He would probably have said the same thing about Jane. He might not have even insisted on a good home for her.
John and Jane delivered the horse and Joanne was ecstatic, as only a first-time horse owner can be. Sheba was a small, refined flea-bitten grey mare, 14 hands high, barely enough to qualify as a horse.
A little explanation here. A hand equals four inches. A horse’s height is measured from the ground to the top of his shoulder blades, his withers. If a horse is exactly five feet from ground to wither top, that converts to exactly 60 inches. Sixty divided by four equals 15. Ergo, the horse is said to be 15 hands high. See how simple that is?
Sheba barely qualified for horsehood. She was just 14.2, that is, fourteen hands two inches high. Any equine below that height is a pony. It’s official. It’s a recognized by all the major horse and pony associations.
When I said she was a flea-bitten grey I did not mean she had flea blight. She was a light grey horse with darker flecks of grey. If the darker grey flecks had been larger and less defined, she would have been dappled instead of flea-bitten.
Sheba had one other identifying mark, a scar on her left flank and some muscle missing under it. Something majorly bad had happened to her, but no one ever found out what it was. She had healed and was sound of wind and limb.
Sheba fit into the Heyser family very well. Horses actually like being with kids, if the kids show any competence at all. Kids go interesting places and do interesting things. Adults ride in circles or walk on trails. Sometimes they enter horse show classes and walk, trot, canter and back up. Ooh, and this is exciting, be still my beating heart, sometimes adults go out and stand around in the middle of a show ring attached to their horses with lead lines and nice halters while someone called “the judge” walks around them and makes cryptic comments to someone called “the secretary” who notes them down on her clipboard. Then a few people get ribbons and everyone goes home. No, on the whole, horses would rather be with kids than adults.
Joanne and Sheba used to gymkhana a lot. Gymkhana is a competition for young people involving pole bending (they don’t actually bend the poles, they weave in and out like a slalom), barrel racing (again, they don’t race the barrels, they run around them in tight Celtic knots) and other surprise events.
One such surprise event involved the kids and their horses starting on a line, racing to the other end of the ring, dismounting, lifting up a barrel, trying to grab whatever they found there, get back on their horse again, and ride back to the finish line. Under each barrel was a live chicken. Assuming the kid could grab her chicken, there was not one hope in Hell of ever catching her horse again. As for mounting with a squawking chicken in her hand, forget it! Most of the horses were hysterical but Sheba thought it was a wonderful game called “chicken stomp.” While the other horses were trying to flee, she was trying to nail the birds with her hooves. She couldn’t do it because the chickens were fast and there were just too many of them. But she tried. And she had a wonderful time. Everybody else was frustrated, but Sheba had a wonderful time.
About a year had passed and Joanne and Sheba had formed a firm friendship and effective partnership on the trail. It was at this point that Jane Doe phoned to say that she wanted her horse back. Her new boyfriend was a jockey and he thought they could get $400 for the horse at auction. Joanne was in hysterics, but her mother, Esther, was made of sterner stuff. She said, “John gave us that horse. The understanding was that if you wanted her back, you could have her. But you are not going to sell her at auction!” Jane never called again.
Sheba was an extremely intelligent horse, not always a good thing. When Joanne’s family constructed the corral they prefabbed the uprights by joining two 2x6s with spacers in between them. In that way, other 2x6 rails could be slid into place and wouldn’t have to be nailed there. This ingenious arrangement made it possible to slide the railings out of the way and drive a pickup into the corral area. The whole thing was made more secure by running an electrically charged hot wire inside the top rail.
But not only was the structure a corral, it was also an intelligence test, one that Sheba easily passed. First, she learned to test the wire with one whisker. If there was no tingle showing electricity, she could then tear the wire down at her leisure. Once that had been accomplished, she then demonstrated that if humans could slide rails into place, then she could unslide them.
Later she learned to associate the “ka-chonk ka-chonk” of the fence charger with electricity in the wire. No sound in the barn, no fury in the wire. Sheba no longer had to employ the whisker test. Extreme intelligence in your horse is a mixed blessing.
To offset her intelligence, Sheba was a very kind animal. She and Joanne learned to play together well, especially the “mechanical horse” routine. There was a large peach tree in the Heyser back yard and Sheba was very fond of peaches. Joanne could lead her to the tree, give her one peach, and then ride her around the back yard without saddle or bridle. After one turn around the yard, she would fetch up at the tree for another peach. Watching Sheba eat peaches was worth the price of admission. She would bit in to her peach, get this insane smile and slobber would pour out of her mouth by the bucket. After a minute, she would spit the pit back out, dry as an archaeologist’s bone.
It’s a good thing for me that Sheba was kind, because I learned to ride on her. Poor Sheba. She certainly put up with a lot from me.
©Ken Harris, 2009
Growing a mane and tail were beyond me, so I set about learning to ride. Sheba taught me, so it is fitting that I start my tale with her. Without Sheba there would have been no Ken and Legend. Well, yes there would have been individually, but not together as the eminently defeatable team we became.
Sheba, a small, refined Arab mare, was a horse with a history. Unfortunately, nobody knew what that history was. We never found out.
Joanne claims she was born to ride horses. She and her older sister, Audrey, spent their summers on the family mining claim on Paiute Mountain in California’s southern Sierra Nevadas. Whenever the two girls found a horse minding its own business in a nearby meadow, they would attempt to catch and ride him. They always let him go. It wasn’t really horse stealing. It was more of a catch-and-release program.
During the winter months the family lived in East Los Angeles and Joanne rented horses from nearby stables with her babysitting money and she worked one summer at a camp as a counselor. She got to ride there.
But it was not quite the same thing as owning her own horse. It wasn’t even close. And so, one day in 1951 when Joanne was 17, her parents moved from East Los Angeles to El Monte, to a nice house on a large lot with a repairable barn and room for a corral for a horse. And Sheba came into her life. Drumroll here.
A friend of a friend of Joanne’s sister, Audrey, had a horse. She (call her Jane Doe) and her husband (but of course, John) were separating, and the horse had to go. Joanne’s mother, Esther, contacted John who told her, “It’s this way. We’re splitting the sheets and the horse has to go. If you will give her a good home, she’s yours.” He would probably have said the same thing about Jane. He might not have even insisted on a good home for her.
John and Jane delivered the horse and Joanne was ecstatic, as only a first-time horse owner can be. Sheba was a small, refined flea-bitten grey mare, 14 hands high, barely enough to qualify as a horse.
A little explanation here. A hand equals four inches. A horse’s height is measured from the ground to the top of his shoulder blades, his withers. If a horse is exactly five feet from ground to wither top, that converts to exactly 60 inches. Sixty divided by four equals 15. Ergo, the horse is said to be 15 hands high. See how simple that is?
Sheba barely qualified for horsehood. She was just 14.2, that is, fourteen hands two inches high. Any equine below that height is a pony. It’s official. It’s a recognized by all the major horse and pony associations.
When I said she was a flea-bitten grey I did not mean she had flea blight. She was a light grey horse with darker flecks of grey. If the darker grey flecks had been larger and less defined, she would have been dappled instead of flea-bitten.
Sheba had one other identifying mark, a scar on her left flank and some muscle missing under it. Something majorly bad had happened to her, but no one ever found out what it was. She had healed and was sound of wind and limb.
Sheba fit into the Heyser family very well. Horses actually like being with kids, if the kids show any competence at all. Kids go interesting places and do interesting things. Adults ride in circles or walk on trails. Sometimes they enter horse show classes and walk, trot, canter and back up. Ooh, and this is exciting, be still my beating heart, sometimes adults go out and stand around in the middle of a show ring attached to their horses with lead lines and nice halters while someone called “the judge” walks around them and makes cryptic comments to someone called “the secretary” who notes them down on her clipboard. Then a few people get ribbons and everyone goes home. No, on the whole, horses would rather be with kids than adults.
Joanne and Sheba used to gymkhana a lot. Gymkhana is a competition for young people involving pole bending (they don’t actually bend the poles, they weave in and out like a slalom), barrel racing (again, they don’t race the barrels, they run around them in tight Celtic knots) and other surprise events.
One such surprise event involved the kids and their horses starting on a line, racing to the other end of the ring, dismounting, lifting up a barrel, trying to grab whatever they found there, get back on their horse again, and ride back to the finish line. Under each barrel was a live chicken. Assuming the kid could grab her chicken, there was not one hope in Hell of ever catching her horse again. As for mounting with a squawking chicken in her hand, forget it! Most of the horses were hysterical but Sheba thought it was a wonderful game called “chicken stomp.” While the other horses were trying to flee, she was trying to nail the birds with her hooves. She couldn’t do it because the chickens were fast and there were just too many of them. But she tried. And she had a wonderful time. Everybody else was frustrated, but Sheba had a wonderful time.
About a year had passed and Joanne and Sheba had formed a firm friendship and effective partnership on the trail. It was at this point that Jane Doe phoned to say that she wanted her horse back. Her new boyfriend was a jockey and he thought they could get $400 for the horse at auction. Joanne was in hysterics, but her mother, Esther, was made of sterner stuff. She said, “John gave us that horse. The understanding was that if you wanted her back, you could have her. But you are not going to sell her at auction!” Jane never called again.
Sheba was an extremely intelligent horse, not always a good thing. When Joanne’s family constructed the corral they prefabbed the uprights by joining two 2x6s with spacers in between them. In that way, other 2x6 rails could be slid into place and wouldn’t have to be nailed there. This ingenious arrangement made it possible to slide the railings out of the way and drive a pickup into the corral area. The whole thing was made more secure by running an electrically charged hot wire inside the top rail.
But not only was the structure a corral, it was also an intelligence test, one that Sheba easily passed. First, she learned to test the wire with one whisker. If there was no tingle showing electricity, she could then tear the wire down at her leisure. Once that had been accomplished, she then demonstrated that if humans could slide rails into place, then she could unslide them.
Later she learned to associate the “ka-chonk ka-chonk” of the fence charger with electricity in the wire. No sound in the barn, no fury in the wire. Sheba no longer had to employ the whisker test. Extreme intelligence in your horse is a mixed blessing.
To offset her intelligence, Sheba was a very kind animal. She and Joanne learned to play together well, especially the “mechanical horse” routine. There was a large peach tree in the Heyser back yard and Sheba was very fond of peaches. Joanne could lead her to the tree, give her one peach, and then ride her around the back yard without saddle or bridle. After one turn around the yard, she would fetch up at the tree for another peach. Watching Sheba eat peaches was worth the price of admission. She would bit in to her peach, get this insane smile and slobber would pour out of her mouth by the bucket. After a minute, she would spit the pit back out, dry as an archaeologist’s bone.
It’s a good thing for me that Sheba was kind, because I learned to ride on her. Poor Sheba. She certainly put up with a lot from me.
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