My Buckin' Tailbone

I had looked forward to this ride with a couple friends on hilly and brushy trails, and pushing cattle to another pasture. I was riding a borrowed unknown-to-me buckskin mare. She was a grumpy old girl, that hadn't been handled much or ridden in a few years (I even wondered if she were only greenbroke in her younger years), pretty much simply a broodmare. Our task for the day was moving cow-calf pairs and some hefty bulls to another pasture. We had a heck of a time moving one particular big, young, and athletic beefcake who refused to pass the area he knew to be 'hot' where he had a run-in with the electric fence before, which used to cross there. It was the job for the three of us, along with another hand to push this impressive black angus ribeye over and beyond this 'hangup' to get him with the rest of the herd. The still-in-shock buckskin broodmare I rode, never having experienced any of this before, did surprisingly well. Though far less responsive than I was used to with my rope horse, Gus, and I spent much time and energy with my heels in her sides, but she minded reasonable well considering her life as a paddock pet... with this bull that outweighed her two times.

We finished our job of moving the herd, however, no matter the tricks, the reins, the hollers and clucks, we couldn't convince Ribeye to see things our way, and instead of risking life and limb as he grew ever more agitated with our coaxing, demonstrating his disdain for our help by mock-charging our horses and pawing the grass, we figured he'd follow the herd once they began moving up the hill and out of his sight, on his own. Calling it good, it was time to head a big stretch back to the stocktrailer and go home, so the three of us did what cowgirls 'on coffee' do and that is run our cowponies, full throttle, all the way back yipping and hollering. My two friends were up ahead of me, and me being me, couldn't let that happen... but my rusty ride, now tired and irritated with my heels in her sides demanding mock speed to regain lost ground, refused to go up another gear- and as she was galloping began bucking trying to rid herself of her coffee'd cowgirl with a need for speed.

I've ridden out bucking horses while working them in roundpens before, but never while on the run. Unwilling to be beat I held on with determined might- my legs and mostly my pride reined her in hard. The buckskin finally pulled up hard & fast but put in one more hard heave and dive onto her front legs. My pride still held strong, but not without my seat passing the saddle horn, as I watched the bronc's neck and flying mane rise at my face....and nearly going completely over. With time for only momentary surprise when I pushed forward and down in my stirrps that I regained my balance, and slamming my tailbone down... but not into the comfortable thrown of the saddle, but right onto the saddle horn itself- and hard. Momentarily stunned by the uncomfortable surprise, but relieved, as I could feel the angry old mare give to my reins, I reflected on my successful buckout as I got the mare to stop. Snorting & shaking her head mad, but stopped. Regaining composure and overall pleased with my performance, I looked ahead expecting to see my friends waving their hats with admiring smiles and adoration. However, instead I took note that they apparently missed my impressive ride, they even appeared somewhat let down to see my gentle lope to catch up to them (after the bucking). I made more than 8 seconds but no one noticed but Ribeye. Friends being friends, laughed their heads off when I told them about my buckin' saddle horn mishap. I still hear about it today.

Nope, I didn't go to the doctor, what can they do, certainly can't put a cast on it. Just dealt with the hand given me... a sore fanny. And if I sit on the hard ground, I'm still reminded of that day, especially when I'm out by the firepit and enjoying a good ribeye. ;)

Where the wild winds blow,
Sonya
http://www.wildwindart.com
http://www.cowgirloncoffee.com

The Art of Riding

"Riding teaches sensitivity, body awareness, and reading your horse. Just the motion of turning your head, shifts balance and can change a manuever."

Simple things.
Sonya

www.wildwindart.com

Riding through a GOLF COURSE

My friend Katherine and I became cowgirl bandits once again and snuck our horses off the stable grounds, conveniently forgetting the part about stable rules, arena only, supervision, and something about a controlled environment. A mouth full of grit and horsehair at high noon during a heat wave with no one else around was enough to get a girl thinking about riding…. Riding free again.

I wasn’t a bad kid, but like my friends who loved me, knew authority I quietly bucked and with quick calculations lived the life of a little long-haired outlaw at the tender age of 10. The stable grounds once again mirrored a ghost town, miniscule dried-up weeds rolled along the dusty packed ground with the warm breeze … poetically so like the big tumble weeds I had always read about in my favorite cowboy novels. The ‘Good, Bad, and the Ugly’ song ballad played in my head. That was enough to make this little outlaw long for the wide-open spaces just beyond the stable confines. A freedom tasted once already, and now addicted to the adventure under my own power, free of rules and regulations….

It was unavoidable. Just me, my buddy, and two gorgeously nervous horses. I hit up Katherine with my idea. She glanced around, swallowed hard and whispered “Again?” I cocked my eyebrow (as similar to Clint Eastwood's as I could remember), gave her my sly lop-sided grin, and a sure nod. The stable “posse” and regulators, who would know better, were all gone at another horse show for the day. With the taste of freedom on our lips and the need for speed, I got us some inspiration or liquid courage… another glass-bottle of caffeine and high fructose corn syrup, icy cold and wet from condensation from the cola dispenser. We knocked this bad-boy back, wiped our mouths with the backs of our sleeves, caught our horses and prepared for our next adventure. We already did the ‘under the highway overpass’ next to the aquafers ride, and without admitting how scared each of us really were from that time, we agreed to ride in a different direction....

We rode through a few neighborhoods to get to a big patch of well-kept green grass that had been beckoning us, where we could stretch our horses out for a fast breeze. ‘Green’ was a natural kid attractant, especially while riding a horse in the middle of an unusually dry Californian summer where everything that once grew was now a crispy brown unidentifyable underfoot, and if not crispy-dead vegetation then dusty, hard-packed dirt void of any possibility of life …. But there are those well kept and irrigated expanses of green that for one reason or another are well manicured, and I was certain must be put there for the sheer joy of girl and horse. Why shouldn’t a kid ride there? In my mind, grass and horses go together, the “duh” kind of no-brainer.

To get there we had to ride through several neighborhoods. Our mounts pranced delightfully and I was feeling that wild exhilarated feeling again, except for the bellyache from the soda expanding in my stomach from being shook up from the trotting. The horses were wound tight like rubber bands and their ears flicked about nervously, snorting at the new smells and shying or balking to things that appeared out of nowhere here and there. Eye-candy in my opinion. We were fully amused with the city folk who often stopped and stared, or pointed at us with mouths wide open, dogs announcing our ride-by and people & children peering out their windows. Kids playing in their yards either stopped dead still to watch our glossy horses, or those that have never seen a horse in real life went scurrying into garages yelling for mommy. An occasional dog would bark, causing our horses to give us a jarring stop every now and again… but that was more flash and show appeal in our cowgirlUp minds! We felt very important up on those big beautiful horses.

We were well passed our adoring audience, yet confined spaces... but what a feeling it was to step our horses from hard and noisy concrete, to the soft and green freshly mowed lawn, and looking out at the expanse of big grass laid out in front of us. The horses, from our previous experience of galloping through the perfectly manicured grounds of the golf course with flying dirt-clods behind us, were now seemingly conditioned to run at full speed. We had to hold them back like a barrel racer on her eager steed before blazing her pattern. When we finally got there, we felt like we were in cowgirl & horse heaven!

An expanse of perfectly manicured grass……perhaps a park of some sort was our thought.... acres of endless ridability! We rode along laughing and talking, while we held back our horses who were ready to GO and GO FAST…. and for Katherine’s big black homing pigeon….eager to be on a dead-run all the way back home. The music of the curb chains as they chomped their bits played they’re beautiful tune in my head. All of a sudden the feeling of being heroes in a Clint Eastwood movie came to a screeching halt. We came upon a bunch of wild and unruly noisy half-grown men tumbling or slamming eachother to the ground…. Oh, after a ball! We rode right up to a rough game of football with a bunch of guys of all shapes and sizes.

There was no protective gear on these big boys."HEY YOU GIRLS! GET them @$%$@ horses OFF THIS FIELD!" one husky feller bellowed, as others added their no sense to it. Never hearing swear words heading in my direction before, I looked over by shoulder certain he was insulting someone else. I gulped hard realizing there was no one else to defer those comments to. When I realized Katherine was looking over at me, I chose to cover my dismayed look and met hers with my CowgirlUp attitude. To my further horror, there was another guy walking quickly towards us shouting loud enough for his buddies to hear, and my cheeks turned a couple shades of red "Hey girls.... can we have a ride?" Now why we were still just standing there at this point is beyond me. I do believe a state of shock…. But that quickly dissipated when, being my sassy self, I yelled back, "If you can catch us you can ride!" I felt pretty smug with myself, until the whole wild pack of the tougher-than-snot guys all began running at us at the same time. Katherine and I had no time to look at one another again, but by sheer instinct spurred our horses out of there. Our horses took off so fast, I'm sure our "tires were spinning". The horses, accustomed to our full-on gallops and getting out of some sticky situation, were more than obliged to gallop full-throttle homebound! I knew our horses were fast, but I still looked back just to make sure that these big scary fellers weren't faster! DIRT CLODS were flying again! Sweet rebel justice.


Your local cowgirl bandit
Sonya

http://www.wildwindart.com/

AKA
Cowgirl On Coffee …buckin’ good brew!

Emerald Eyes

As a kid I had the fortune to go on a horseback riding vacation with a friend of mine to Desert Hot Springs for a week during summer break- and under a full-moon. The host/riding instructor we stayed with had a house full of cats she'd saved from coyotes, abandonments or drop-off, or the desert itself... at one time or another. Her cats were all different sizes, shapes and colors, much like her horses. But this isn't a story about cats. We stayed there during the week of a full-moon because we were able to only ride at night. It was way too unbearably hot, and potentially deadly to be outdoors during the heat of the day in this beautiful but harsh desert of southern California.

It's here I first learned about riding bareback. I enjoyed learning to ride without a saddle at a walk, trot, and lope, and without the aid of stirrups. My riding balance, posture, and confidence grew with every ride. I learned to ride pretty well because we rode every day and long into the night. We rode so much that we had to switch to fresh horses, giving the winded ones a break. Over the course of the week, we had a grand time laughing it up, and kids being kids... came up with other ideas we found entertaining, whether it was licking salt blocks, sitting in the water trough, or throwing dried-up cowpies or horse-apples at eachother, the list of mischief was endless. But riding bareback by the light of a full moon was nothing short of amazing ~ quite the adventure for a horse-crazy kid. And being a die-hard animal lover I felt right at home being surrounded by many animals. But besides cats and horses, I met another critter in this desert nebula.

All day long during the intense heat, my friend and I anticipated being outdoors and riding horses after sundown, and finally be out of the sweltering stuffy indoors full of cats. The house was inandated with cats, cats literally everywhere. And cats being cats, all were mostly sleeping. There were cats on the counters, the coffee table, anywhere there was sitting or walking room. We snuggled our favorites, but we would talk & breath horses, draw horses, or play with horse models. If we weren't doing that, we were watching movies with horses in them... and you guessed it, with a cat asleep on top of the television set. But as soon as the sun set it's burning rays, and as quickly followed by the handsome orange moon, we got ready for our outdoor adventures. When the moon showed it's round face over the desert horizon, we eagerly changed into our riding jeans, boots and tank tops and about tripped over cats running out the door to head for the dry dusty paddock, halters in hand, searching for our favorite horses... mine was always black. Good to breath the desert air!

Though the sun went down, the air was very still and it felt very much like a hot convection oven. We weren't going to work the horses until it had a chance to cool down much more. There was a tackroom next to the outdoor arena with all our supplies. When it was darker, we used a flashlight to go into the tiny, dusty and cobweb-decorated tackroom to get brushes & bridles, and bribery treats for the horses. It was the very first night I noticed tiny little emerald lights on the ground outside of, as well as inside the dark corners of the tack room. Quite the oddity I thought, but was stunned and surprised when I saw them move! Transfixed, I asked what they were and got a casual reply of "tarantulas". I jumped out of my skin and up onto my friend. I was "creeped-out" to say the least but at the same time amazed and facinated, I couldn't help but keep stairing at the tiny glowing and motating beads of light. I focused my flashlight more directly on one and got a closer look. Yup, their large chunky fuzzy bodies and bountiful load of equally fuzzy and angular legs confirmed their identities.

After some time I managed to pick my jaw up off the floor. Not liking the idea of them in close proximity to myself, but wanting to "cowgirl up" ..... I managed to peel myself off my unsympathetic and laughing friend. Once on the ground in the darkness I was aware of my feet and afraid to step where I couldn't see. I didn't dare step backward without the flashlight around my feet, because I didn't want to step on one.. they were much too big, and I would surely feel one beneath my boot. But kids being of a resilient nature, I eventually got used to the whole idea of desert tarantulas. I enjoyed shining my light on these critters to watch them scurry away. I got so brave, I wondered around looking for them...brave, but with three stipulations: As long as they kept moving from me, did not hold their ground and stair back, or run at me. Satisfied that I hailed the power, my thoughts raced back to the horses tied to the railing waiting for a couple distractable kids. The wide-open desert... moonlight, horses, a laughing friend, and crazy glowing emerald eyes... it doesn't get better than this, I thought.

The tarantulas and their tiny green eyes in the darkness, became part of the captivation of the wild desert and the magic of that time in my life, all with a kid's big sense and quest for adventure and simple amazement. I grew up with the fortune of being outdoors, and many of my adventures were with horses. Every kid in my opinion should at some point in their lives feel grit between their teeth, grab a fist full of horse-hair as their horse rides full gallop, feel soft breath and a velvety nose of a horse on their cheek, hear a welcoming nicker, have a good old-fashioned 'horse-hair' sandwhich, and be truly in awe, amazed, and inspired by nature and all it's amazing critters.

Where the wild winds blow,
Sonya
http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LndpbGR3aW5kYXJ0LmNvbQ==