Cody was a well broke, gentle mare. She had been a stellar saddle horse until she was about 16, then got promoted to broodmare, which she also excelled at. She wouldn’t kick, strike, bite or buck, so a pretty solid horse. When this event happened, it was late fall and I had taken her to the vet to have a small tumor removed from the inside of her right eyelid. To say she was unimpressed with having the ointment that the vet had prescribed put in her eye would be a gross understatement. It had gotten to be such a struggle that it took two of us to do it. I’d back her big butt into a corner of the pen, then while my husband held her head, I’d put the ointment in. We were all rather tired of this twice a day ordeal. We had been gone somewhere and gotten home after dark. So, we both went out to do chores and to doctor Cody. There was no yard light at the barn, so we were working with the yard light that was about 100 yards away by the house.The barn lights had been disabled during this time too, due to a short. This was before anyone had invented a headlamp that one could wear for this sort of thing. So, in the near darkness, we had her backed into the corner of a pen where the light was best to doctor her. One of our cats was quite a chore cat and seldom missed a chance to help us around the place. Her name was Cammie, short for Camouflage, as she was such a color that she was hard to see in broad daylight. This cat was a character and rode around in my husband’s coat hood while he chored. Her affectionate nature endeared her to the whole family. That night, with the wind blowing hard and a front moving in, we had Cody in the corner, one side of which was the plank fence that went all the way over toward the house. We were tussling with Cody, who was absolutely certain she wasn’t going to have ointment put in her eye. She was getting pretty stirred up for her, and was also wired up because of the wind and the dark. Just as I started to approach her eye with the tube of ointment, she snorted loudly and jumped straight ahead about six feet, with my husband hanging off of her head and halter, then she bucked behind. In the dim yard light’s light, we saw Cammie hanging onto to the top of Cody’s butt, claws dug in if Cody’s reaction was any indicator. Cody jumped around, dragging my husband, until Cammie finally leaped for safety. Apparently, Cammie had walked the top plank over to the corrals, as she often did to keep her feet dry, and had hopped over onto the unsuspecting Cody. It would have been from the same side where I was standing, blocking Cody’s vision behind her from her right eye. She clearly thought it was a mountain lion that had sprung onto her! We had to finally use a different corner to actually doctor the mare. There was no way, no how going to happen in that same corner where the smallish lion had leaped on her! Cammie had gone into hiding after hearing what my husband thought about her heritage, so we didn’t see her until the next day. We laughed over the incident later, but it took awhile for my husband to see the humor in it, since it was him who got whacked in the head and got his foot stomped on. I’m pretty certain that Cody never did think it was funny and was ever after suspicious of that particular corner. I don’t think that Cammie ever tried to ride a horse again either.
Jan was raised on a ranch in far western South Dakota. She grew up horseback working all descriptions of cattle, plus sheep and horses. After leaving home she pursued a post-graduate study of cowboying and dayworking in Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota....
