A School Horse Legacy, Volume 1: ...As Tails Go By. Anne Wade-Hornsby
past the roping chute. A student was riding Hashy; I was on someone else. I looked around, and saw her falling behind, so I went to take the reins to help horse and rider by. Hashy looked at me, looked at the cows in the chute, and sat down. Calmly. Well, she lost her balance, and began falling sideways. Her rider screamed, once. Hashy, again calmly, thrust her back feet out to get her balance, rose back up, and stood there. She shot the clear thought to me that she was going absolutely no further. She wasn’t spooking, she had stayed under the kid, and I had better deal with it. I calmed my student, who had not become unbalanced in the least, turned around, and took the long way. Lesson learned. No horse is really perfect. Some things don’t need to be done your way if there are other just as good ways to do them. I have had that discussion soooo many times over the years, with animals and humans. I learned to value and consider the merits of my horses’ opinions early on. It was one of my first and most important lessons.
Hashy was fully aware of her Number One status in the barn. Feeding time was something she enjoyed. As she aged, got stiffer, and was ridden less, I think she looked forward to the interaction we always gave her when we fed her -the pets, rubs, and treats. Upon hearing the feed wagon, her tail would come up, her neck would arch, and no one would guess she was way north of 25. She would snake that thick neck and kick up her heels, then trot over to the bucket, and wait for her due. Her last night was no different. It was nippy weather, and she was full of it. She kicked up her heels, then gave a playful rear, which is when her hip gave out. It was instantly obvious that something was wrong: she couldn’t get up, and we heard the pop. We called the vet immediately: our compassionate friend told us to get Hashy to his hospital as quickly as we could.
My husband and I both knew this was it. Getting her up and into the trailer was a credit only to her will and desire to please us. This was the first trip of its kind of the many I have had to take over the years. I don’t know how my husband stayed on the road; the tears just flowed. At the vet, we were tearful and silent. The unloading was silent, and to this day, I do not know how vets handle these events with the grace they do.
The drive home was beyond tears. I am tearing up as I write this. I was, and am, thankful at so many levels, that I was graced with the companionship of this horse. I used to joke that her name, Hashish, was oh so appropriate. Her color was that of the finest. Riding with her, working with her, was a much better high, however. When I tried to get “HASHISH” as the license plate of our first car (a 1960 VW bug), of course, that didn’t happen. So, we settled for “HASHY”, and I still have it. How fortunate I am that my first school horse turned out to be the best possible. Hashy just naturally met high expectations, and they will always take you further than just going with the flow. This was the second of her lessons. Every act associated with my riding school assumes the best outcome because I had the best to start with and never knew any differently.
2
BENEFACTOR
The Hard Work Begins
When the riding school started, my husband and I were renting a house across the street from his parents. The main estate had since been sub-divided. My in-laws lived in a gorgeous, stately 7500 square foot mansion across the street; we rented a much smaller stone and stucco home in the middle of an orange grove that had originally been built for the son of a former resident of the big house.
Our piece of property included the house, a separate two car garage/workshop, and a sort of shed diagonally across from the house. We had about an acre of land, but the orange trees and stumps in the exact middle of it, between the shed and the house, and a huge graveled driveway, precluded using it for any kind of exercise area for the horses. We built a rudimentary fence from wire and two by fours, and those were our corrals. They were small and rickety, and needed frequent repair, but they were cheap. We did have wire fencing of a kind around the property, sort of an inexpensive version of chain link. When I look back on all that, knowing now the damage horses can do to themselves and property when not safely confined, I absolutely marvel at our good fortune. God truly protects babies and fools.
As I mentioned, Hashy was a trooper. She accepted the confines of her wire “pen” right off. She was way too smart to endanger herself. When I sold Merlin, and bought Benefactor, it was a different story. Bene (pronounced Benny) was huge – 17.2 hands of chunk. His mother was a Quarter Horse, mostly thoroughbred, who had escaped her confines one night at a local stable and managed to get herself bred by a draft horse of some sort at the ranch next door. The result was a really big bay “Baby Huey” who charged into this world genetically engineered to bust out of things.
He was a little over three when I bought him. Needless to say, I learned, quickly, that if one is looking for a nice, safe, school horse, a dim three year old isn’t it. My best school horses averaged around 16 to 20 years of age and were mellow to begin with. Well, Bene was mellow. He wasn’t terrifically spooky and he had been well “broke”. Typical of most Western trained horses I looked at or considered purchasing at the time, Bene had been trained at the age of two by a professional. And I had no complaints. The de-sensitizing practices, heavy Western saddle, and no nonsense work in the round pen and subsequent trail rides his previous owners acquainted him with did nothing but positive things to his mind. Throughout my riding school days to this day, the best horses I ever worked with were those trained by good Western trainers or those I trained myself. But, for all that, Bene did not have a lot of common sense.
Thank heavens he wasn’t spooky. At first I attributed this to a mellow personality. I soon learned he just didn’t worry about a lot of things, like gates, and fences, holes in the ground, riders’ aides, bits, crops, and yelling. Pretty much nothing fazed him, and to get a reaction from him, the stimulus had to be precise, and the goal a picture in the rider’s brain.
I learned quickly that “modeling” starts and finishes with the rider. In this respect, the years of teaching public school sixth – eighth grade students in math and science helped me no end. He gave me my first real lessons in communication between horse and rider.
I bought Bene because he was huge. I am six feet tall. I wanted a competition horse to do 3-Day Eventing and jumping. I had not taken formal dressage lessons nor had I ever actually ridden in a 3-Day Event. So, when I bought him, I had no clue, yet, of the extraordinary lessons I would learn from this horse, lessons that made me sympathetic to all the trials and challenges I was to put my riding students through time and time again. Challenges that I could guarantee they would overcome, because I had had to deal with all of them as I developed my school horses. Bene was the first in a long line. He was also a blank slate that took every tool in my rider’s tool chest to work with successfully, and made me invent others!
When I bought Bene, around 1972 or 1973, I did not immediately use him as a school horse. I had Hashy, and my other two or three students had their own horses. I was, myself, taking lessons from a local trainer with fairly impeccable credentials. I will always thank her for impressing upon me the importance of quiet, effective hands. She also taught me the value of positive feedback and encouragement, which I never, ever got from her. She didn’t like my horse (too coarse, not refined enough), nor the fact that I asked a lot of questions. She wanted me to attend clinics when a) I had no trailer to get there, and b) no way were clinics in my budget. My husband and I were eating frijoles twice a week to afford my lessons. We finally parted ways when she said she had found the perfect horse for me for $5000! I was earning about $1100 a month at the time. Teachers made decent money in the ‘70s, but that was way out of our budget and, besides, I knew Bene could be great. But I did attend some clinics. I took Bene to nearby Charles de Kunphy Dressage Clinics, and was much the better for it. For one, I learned what a 3-Day Event was.
By this time, Bene was about six, and I had been jumping him for two years, more or less. As I said, nothing much worried him, and he