ONE EYED HORSE
- November 19, 2024
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- Jan Swan Wood
Posted in: Featured, Horse Training, Ranch Life
Many decades ago my oldest brother Steve bought a three year old gelding off of the race track. The colt was well bred, grown out huge, and athletic. Unfortunately, he had gotten an eye blinded while at the track due to some kids shooting BB guns in the barns, so wasn’t a good candidate as a race horse.
Steve got him bought right and had high hopes for the big colt. He called him Johnny.
Johnny at three, was a full 16 hands tall and pretty stout for his age. Johnny was “track broke” but hadn’t been ridden anywhere but at the track or in a barn. So, Steve started riding him after work and on weekends. That proved more difficult than he’d anticipated because the big colt could sure buck. Steve got him rode most of the time, but soon decided that Johnny needed much more riding than Steve had for him. So, he proposed a trade with me for the summer.
I had a stout, broke, five year old gelding that I intended to sell eventually, so Steve proposed that he take my horse and start him heading steers and I’d take Johnny and ride him on my summer cattle. It seemed like a good deal for both of us. My horse would get his value increased by being roped on in the arena, and Johnny would get wet saddle blankets and miles and maybe get the buck out of him.
When I got Johnny to my place, I knew he hadn’t been ridden for a week or so, and that he’d bucked Steve off the last ride. I also knew that if Steve couldn’t ride him when he bucked, I probably couldn’t either, so deemed it wise to cheat him for a while. I rigged up a deal that kept Johnny’s head up so he couldn’t get it down to buck to his full ability. It dropped over my saddle horn and ran down to the snaffle rings. I actually rode him in a heavy bosal with the rig, so it didn’t interfere with my handling of him, and as long as his head was up and in the right position, it didn’t pull on him in any way.
He’d sure get frustrated when he couldn’t buck, but I’d just keep moving him along until he’d get tired of trying. He traveled really easy, so could sure cover the miles on the big circles I needed to make to check all the cattle I had in my care.
The blind side, which was on the right, worried him at first as well, but before long he’d adapted, with my help, to having things happen on that side that he couldn’t see. He got to where a rope wasn’t any concern and he trusted me to not do him wrong on the side he couldn’t see. He got to liking his job, got some of the sass sweated out of him, and settled down to doing the right thing, so I’d quit using the rig that kept his head up. He never bucked again with me after about the first month.
I rode Johnny all summer and by the end of September he was pretty well broke and solid. When I’d shipped the last of the summer herd yearlings out, Steve and I traded back. He was tickled to get a broke horse back that he could go on with and I was happy to have my gelding with one more thing on his resume’ as well.
I’d gotten to where I didn’t even think about Johnny being one eyed, but it took Steve a while to feel sure that Johnny was solid with it. That’s understandable. That fall, Steve started riding Johnny in the road ditch along a county road near the town where he lived. Johnny was fit from me riding him, but Steve needed to get himself fit for an elk hunt he was going on in Wyoming. So, he started pouring the feed to Johnny and they’d go lope and trot about 15 miles a day. By the time they left for the elk hunt, they were both lean and hard fit, ready to go the distance.
They got to the mountains and packed in a couple of days to the base camp they were going to hunt from. It was a family deal with my Dad, my three brothers, one son-in-law, and a nephew, along with Dad’s cousin and his three sons. They’d pair off and ride out and then scout and hunt in the various drainages in the mountains. On the day this particular incident occurred, somehow Steve and the brother-in-law, who was a total greenhorn and not afraid to admit it, had gotten paired off to go hunt a specific area. They’d spotted some elk and made a stalk, but didn’t get one. However, the extra time on the stalk had taken them a long way from where they’d left their horses tied. By the time they got back on the horses, it was nearly dark.
Steve took the lead and found the trail back to camp. In the daylight a stretch of the trail had made them pucker up pretty good, as it was steep, solid rock, and had a drop off on one side that would have made an eagle nervous. As they made their descent in the dark, it clouded up and before long, it was absolutely pitch black. My brother-in-law Brett said that the only way he could even see his horse’s ears in front of him was when the borium calks on Johnny’s shoes would make a spark.
Going up the trail the drop off had been on the side of Johnny’s good left eye. On the way down, it was on the right. Steve, already sweating bullets over the trail, got to thinking about Johnny’s blind eye and him not being able to see that drop off. Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer and decided that the safest thing he could do would be to get off, lead Johnny and feel his way down on foot.
Steve stepped off on the safe side of the trail, tied his reins up so they wouldn’t fall down, and taking hold of the lead rope on Johnny’s halter, started down the trail, feel his way along with his feet. Suddenly, he dropped into space! He grabbed the halter rope with his other hand and hung on tight, hoping Johnny wouldn’t lead ahead. Johnny had planted his feet so Steve was able to climb back up and over the edge and onto the trail, gasping for breath.
When he finally got his wind and quit shaking, he stood up, groped his way back to Johnny’s left side, untied his reins, and stepped back on. He concluded that maybe Johnny’s one eye saw more in the inky darkness than Steve did with both of his. After several hours, they finally got to the camp, tired, cold and wrung out from stress.
When they stepped off their horses, my Dad walked over to see how Brett was doing. He summed it up for both he and Steve when he said, while leaning his forehead on the swell of his saddle, “One night of sheer terror is enough to last a man a lifetime.” Steve wholeheartedly agreed, and never doubted Johnny’s good eye and good sense again.
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Posted in: Featured, Horse Training, Ranch Life
About Jan Swan Wood
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....