Hank the cow horse

This is a photo of hubby Ron and a big bay roan gelding we bought at a sale that had come from a Ranch in Montana where he was being used to sort cattle. Hank was big, muscular, missing the refined look of a show horse but nevertheless a handsome horse. A riding horse deluxe with fast tight turns, and quick roll backs, blinding spurts of speed when you asked for it, and screeching stops. "Handy" is the word the cowboys use.

As you can imagine Ron wanted to keep him. As you can imagine I thought he was too much horse for us. This was approximately 11 years ago, the kids were small, and Ron had only been a "horseman" for a little over 5 years and it was not my kind of riding. This horse was the kind that would have been a prospect to turn into a barrel or pole horse since there were no cattle ranches to speak of in Indiana. Rural life there is corn and bean fields.

That and the other thing that was "odd" about Hank ( at least to me) were the holes in his training. While he was trained to ride out of this world, he was terrified of getting a bath, fly spray, having his ears clipped, or any other "pampering" our horses were used to. I actually was so stunned by the oddity of him being so well trained and yet not comfortable at all with what I considered "routine" things that I called Dale Haley the man who owned the sale barn about it. Dale laughed at me and asked me what did I expect from a bonafide "ranch" hoss?  He said "That horse has never seen a bottle of fly spray, and the only time he ever got a bath was when it rained!"

Fair enough.

We spent enough time bonding with Hank that he got over his fears of things we thought were part of every horses life. We have since ran into a number of our Amish trained draft horses with the same type of problems. No doubt from the same lack of exposure to them. They too have learned to enjoy the finer things in life. Ultimately Hank was sold to a guy that wanted him for exactly what he was. Which is, as it should be.