Those horses get just like the people what owns ‘em

By Terri Jo Bek, Professor, Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture

Jo Bek

Kids and ponies sometimes form special bonds. Although many people have grown up with rotten little ponies that had a myriad of ways to rid themselves of their riders, there were actually some nice ponies that were wonderful companions to the children who owned them. My brother ended up with some of each. Luckily, he started out with really nice ones, had a really tough one and ended up with a real sweetheart of a horse.

As I’ve already written, Jess traded my cousin’s and my old pony off to a horse trader for a different pony when he was three years old. It was an old black mare that was perfect for a beginning rider. When we got her she had a small colt on her, but if she had on a saddle and bridle she didn’t even nicker to her baby while the kids were riding her. In addition, as long as she was saddled and bridled, she wouldn’t try to graze grass.

I saw Jess and Vicki, my younger sister, in the corral one day. As I walked down to investigate, I saw that they were taking turns riding the little black mare. She didn’t have anything on in the way of tack, however. As soon as one of them crawled off the fence onto her back, she would walk the length of the corral fence, turn around and come back to the starting point, and stop and wait patiently for her next rider.

My dad worked one summer running heavy equipment for building watershed dams in southeast Kansas. The guys would carpool early each morning to drive to the work site. Dad said that they went by a farm that raised very large Yorkshire pigs. They would see the sows eating from self-feeders every morning. One morning one of the sows turned and looked at them and he noticed a little horse face. It was a three-year-old pony. He was the same color as the sows with the exception of a dun stripe down his back, mane and tail, zebra stripes on his legs and some color on his face. Dad bought him and brought him home to Jess, who was then five years old. It was only fitting the pony be named Porky Pig. He was so fat that Jess rode him bareback for nearly a year before he was skinny enough to hold a saddle so that it wouldn’t turn with him.

He didn’t have any vices, but my dad had to get on the little guy and teach him to turn right. Apparently, the little girl who had owned him didn’t make him go to the right. We have movies of my six-foot-tall father riding the little pony and teaching him to go right. Dad had to hold his feet up off the ground.

He never bit anyone, kicked at anyone, bucked anyone off or ran off with anyone. His top speed was a bone-jarring trot. The rider had to carry a switch to get Porky to go. It could be the size of a pencil, but if the rider dropped it, Porky Pig came to a screeching halt. Also, if someone fell off, he’d stop and wait for the rider to mount. He was Jess’ constant companion.

The silo crew was laughing one day because Mom caught Jess attempting to get the pony inside the house, but the horse had left a gift of manure on the cement porch. Jess had a shovel and was in the process of cleaning up the mess when they came in for the noon meal. Inside, I discovered missing Cheerios, bread and an entire angel food cake. I questioned Jess. Apparently, Porky enjoyed eating these treats and Jess was more than happy to provide them for him.

Over the years we loaned the pony out to other families for their kids to learn to ride. When Jess was 24, he buried his pony up on the creek. He figured twenty-some kids learned to ride on the little dun pony.

My dad called one day when my own child was two years old. He told me that he’d found me a thirty-two-year-old pony that I had to lead around. I can’t express in words how happy that made me. He was one inch short of being a mini. His name was Baby John and approximately thirty-some children had learned to ride on him. Paige had him for five more years. The last two years of his life, he just hung out in the yard like a big dog. Paige would sit on him and ride him around with nothing on him. He was so arthritic that he could only trot.

Paige and her friends dressed him in clothes. She read books to Baby John, the Corgi dog and the cats while perched on the corral fence. They all stood or laid below her and appeared to pay attention. She would call him “Old Baby John.”

One day I caught her riding him backwards as hard as he could trot. Another day, after watching a trick rider, she was standing up on his back wobbling around and told me, “Mom it’s kind of wobbly up here!” I suggested that she sit her little behind down on the pony and stay there.

I lived in dread that I would go out and find him dead one day. One night I walked and called and walked and called, but couldn’t find him. Finally, I had Warren bring Paige out so she could try and call for him. She yelled, “Johnnie” in her shrill little girl voice. The pony answered in his shrill little pony voice and jogged straight for Paige. He had been standing stock still in the deep shadows right by the barn. I had walked by him at least five different times, yelling his name, without him moving a muscle. He certainly didn’t care for my husband and me as much as he did Paige, because this was the second time this sort of thing had happened.

The next pony we got for her was a medium-sized one that I could ride. Paige could always catch Cody, but he wasn’t that excited with Warren and me. We lent that horse to two little girls once Paige was past the pony phase. He lived with them for several more years.

The take-home message here is that if you are lucky enough to have a “good” pony, you should pass him around to make positive memories for other little kids. Please don’t pass around the naughty ones. The memories that they make are memorable, but not so positive.

Those horses get just like the people what owns ‘em

Jo Bek

By Terri Jo Bek, Professor, Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture

People always say, “Good help is hard to find.” My dad’s motto seemed to be, “We don’t care how good they are; if they survive, we’ll consider them trained.” Most of the people that he enlisted to help were actually pretty good hands. It was some of the help they brought along with them that caused the occasional wreck. Of course, if all was going well Dad might be the instigator of the wreck himself.

Dad enjoyed having people around and pulling practical jokes on unsuspecting individuals. That was one of his favorite activities. This also seemed to be the sort of people that would show up to help when we worked cattle or moved them from place to place. When I was attending college, both at Emporia State University and Colby Community College, he would call and say, “Why don’t you bring some of those fat girls home and we’ll work cattle?” Now, you have to understand that few to none of my friends could be termed “fat” in any remote sense of the word. This was my dad’s way of saying, “Why don’t you bring some of your friends home and we’ll see what we can do for entertainment.”

On one such occasion two friends from Colby decided they would come home with me during the fall semester and help drive our dad’s cows home from pasture. We unloaded in the southwest corner of the pasture and were proceeding to the backside, where we would spread out and make sure that we hadn’t left any livestock behind when we headed to the gate in the west fence. As we rode toward the opposite corner of the pasture, I could see a rider approaching from that direction. I asked Dad who it was and he said it was a guy that he’d met that worked in the local feedlot who was a pretty good hand.

As the rider came closer and closer to us, I could see his horse shying from something and appearing to be quite “goosy” about riding forward toward us. Closer and closer the rider approached, with his horse snorting and shying instead of riding forward with confidence. With several yards separating us, I realized that the horse was shying from something white wrapped around its breast collar. The ends of the white material kept flying around, causing the horse some anxiety. Once again the thought was running through my mind, “Where in the world did Dad find this guy?” Once we were all close enough to stop and for Dad to introduce everyone, it was obvious on closer scrutiny that the flapping white material was toilet paper that had been carefully wrapped around the breast collar of this man’s horse.

Dad introduced us to Norman Wilson. I was waiting in high anticipation as to the explanation for the toilet paper. As it happened, Mr. Wilson was eager to enlighten us as to its purpose. It seems that Norman Wilson grew up in Kansas, but very close to the Oklahoma border, so when he speaks there is a certain twang in his voice that can be heard in most of us that have lived in the Flint Hills very long. The farther south you go, the more pronounced it becomes. Norman informed us, “Iaaa hearrrrd that we were going to have some college girrrrrls along, soooo Iaaaa thought Iaaaa would sellll this toilet paper for a nickel a squaaare!” He accomplished this explanation without cracking even a hint of a smile. I looked at my friends and then at my dad. I was really wondering where Dad had managed to dig this one up. Finally, Norm and Dad cracked up. I would later learn as Norm and his family helped out on many occasions, that even though one is 99.9% sure that he is pulling your leg about something, there is that 1% of the time that causes you to hesitate while scrutinizing his implacable facial features to discern that this might be the one time that he is telling you the truth.

He nearly convinced a couple of young ladies that he had a dog that rode horses and played an instrument. They had come home with me after I had decided to sell my cows because my dad was ill and would no longer be able to take care of them. Norman was helping us and we had stopped and driven to town while I was doing some paperwork on some horses. They were all visiting about dogs, another of Norm’s favorite subjects. One of the girls mentioned that they owned a Corgi that liked to ride with them on their horses at her home. Norm said that he had a Corgi that liked to ride on horses as well, but he had to quit taking the dog along because he was annoying the other cowboys when the dog would start playing its harmonica. Now, one of the girls had been around Norm previously and the other one had spent a couple of days with him. However, as I observed them out of the corner of one of my eyes I noticed that Norm was wearing that look on his face that made everyone stop and wonder if he was telling the truth or not. Both girls were closely scrutinizing him, but he never wavered. Jodi finally said, “Right, Norm, right.” Then we all started laughing. He said, “I had you going didn’t I?” They both agreed that for a couple of seconds they were contemplating a harmonica playing Corgi. While my dad had the “stare,” Norman had the “look.” Even after all these years he still catches some of us from time to time.

Those horses get just like the people what owns ‘em

By Terri Jo Bek, Professor, Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture

In many areas of the country, just because it is winter and the snow flies doesn’t mean that people stop riding their horses and doing their jobs. At home my dad would buy southern yearlings through the fall into January and we would doctor those cattle out on brome that ran along a creek south of the house. When I was about seven or eight years old, my job was to ride behind my dad holding onto a bottle of Terramycin and a 50 cc metal syringe, one in each hand. I held onto the tie strings on the back of the saddle for dear life while my dad roped the sick yearlings. He would then take the medicine and syringe and go down the rope and doctor the sick steer. I never mentioned that racing along at full speed with him swinging a rope over my head scared me to death. At such a young age, I felt certain that if I just closed my eyes it wouldn’t be nearly as scary as keeping them open. Of course, I now realize that instead of feeling like we were cruising along at 70 mph it felt like we were flying along about 90 mph.
One cold morning we were west of our place in a group of cattle that Dad looked after for a neighbor. It was icy in places, had thawed somewhat where the sun hit the ground and then turned slick again in the shade. I guess Dad thought the ground situation was a little dicey, so he set me down on the ground with my syringe and medicine. He was riding my kid horse, Beaver. He roped the steer in open ground where the sun had been shining; however, before things came to a stop the steer headed for the brush along the creek and Beaver and Dad found themselves sledding along behind the steer toward the creek. If a horse could have a shocked look on his face, that horse did.
Although he had cowboy caulks and cleats on his shoes, Beaver was laying down a set of tracks that would have made a reiner with sliders on his horse proud. Thankfully, God felt sorry for us all and the steer wound himself up in some of the brush. Beaver got his feet under him and with the aid of a bush everything came to a screeching halt. Dad stepped off the horse and that was my clue to run with the supplies so he could doctor the steer. I know that several mothers are gasping in horror to think that Dad would allow me to run with a large needle pointed at some part of my anatomy. I have since learned, after having a child, that apparently we have fathers to teach us to be independent and not be afraid. However, I have also learned that there are many things that children do with fathers that are best not told to mothers. In most cases “ignorance is bliss.” As my dad positioned himself to administer the medicine, the needle broke on the syringe. I can’t really remember exactly what happened. It may have been when the steer tried his best to knock my dad from one side of the bush through to the other side. Beaver held his ground as best he could and Dad and the steer were able to come to an understanding that the steer had to stand very still in order to maintain the ability to breathe adequately. Dad was less than ecstatic about his situation until he remembered that he had stuck a couple of extra needles into the hatband on his cowboy hat. He doctored the steer, gathered up his horse and rode back to where I stood; and he reached down, hauled me up behind him, gave me the supplies and we headed for the house. From then on he always had a couple of stainless steel needles stuck into his hatband.
Although Beaver was fairly reliable, he had his moments when I was sure my dad felt like shooting him between the eyes. He was always getting into things and wrecking havoc on a fairly regular basis. Dad had brought home about a ton of ground milo for some calves he was feeding in the corral. It was in burlap sacks and he had stacked it neatly in our granary. Somehow during the night, Beaver managed to get the granary door open and drag most of it out into the corral. He managed to drag it around and around in the dirt, stomping on the sacks and destroying not only the sack, but all of the contents. The next morning Dad found him standing among the sacks with white powder on the end of his muzzle. He admitted to me later that he was in hopes that the horse would at least get a belly ache, but since he didn’t like milo, he didn’t eat any of it. To add insult to injury, later in the week he managed to get himself lodged in the water tank, and since he couldn’t get out, the water froze around his legs. I can remember standing and crying as dad chopped him out of the ice. I asked dad, “Is he going to die?” to which my dad replied, “I certainly hope so!”