🔵 By Matthew Boivin. Photo by lauragrafie.
It is a sad thing when a cowboy loses his horse, and my horse is not just any old horse. Bow has been my friend for the last two years, sharing all kinds of adventures with me as we deal with these rangy old cows. Recent changes in the prison administration have shifted the Beef Herd dynamic, taking Bow out from under my saddle, but not splitting our friendship.
The story should start, I suppose, with a description of the changes that shifted my day-to-day duties. In true cowboy fashion, it all started with a trip to the largest cattle operation in Texas – the Texas Department of Correction. The TDC operates a cattle operation nettling over $8 million every year, and our Farm Administrator left Cummins to tour the prison in Texas. He came back with visions of grandeur filling his head and started changing things. One of those changes was hiring a new supervisor to help him put his plans in place. In true prison fashion, the prisoner winds up bearing the brunt, and I lost two friends – the old man I worked with for three years and my favorite hose, Bow. In true convict fashion, though, I found a way to make the best of all of it.
The first trail I took to find a way through the changes was on the back of Penny Two-Stockings. Training her has been a back-burner project the last year or more, so it was past time to move her preparation to the only burner. Our new supervisor started out riding Moody, but he was not comfortable with her trot. Moody wings out when she trots, which makes her front feet hit pretty flat, giving the impression of riding a jackhammer. That shock is transmitted straight to the saddle. I cannot fault her for her natural gait, but the supervisor was not happy with how uncomfortable she is to ride. He kept asking me, “Are you gonna have Penny ready for me to ride when I get back from the Training Academy?” All I could really answer was, “Yep”. In this way, Penny’s training came to the forefront.
The first day of her official training, I was unfortunately stuck on a tractor. I was grading a road, and when I saw Penny in the round pen with the yay-hoos, my first impulse was to swoop in and save my horse. I could tell from her body language, even at a distance, that she was not happy at all with the guy bothering her. I say “bothering” because she appeared to me to just be looking for a way out of the round pen. By the time I got off the tractor after my work was through, all the horses were in the pasture. I noticed the guy limping as we got on the truck to go in for the day. Turns out, he tried to ride Penny twice, and she put him on the ground twice. To add insult to injury, she kicked him, too, when he hit the ground the second time. I held my tongue, though, wanting to see if the guy really knew how to train horses as he claimed. The brief view I had, even from a distance, did not impress me much, and the next day proved it.
My tractor duties were done, so it was time to see where Penny’s mind was after her ordeal the day before. I got her saddled okay, but as soon as I put her in the round pen, she blew up. Poor girl was so rapped up in anticipation of what she obviously feared, that she had to let me know she was ready to fight from the moment she had all four feet in the round pen. I got her calmed down and closed the gate to the pen before taking her lead rope off. The wide-eyed look in her eyes told me it would take a very gentle hand today. She was extremely wary and kept backing away from my touch. I felt sad for her because she would let me close then start bucking as soon as I touched the saddle. Fear dominated her mind again, destroying any trust we built. I could see all our progress disintegrated from one day with a fool. She and I would have to start over to rebuild the tenuous trust we have. The supervisor pulled up and watched as she blew up over and over again. “Just climb on and ride the buck out of her,” he said. I am certainly not afraid of Penny’s power because I have ridden her through her fits more than once. A hard ride would just reinforce her fears, though, and it would be counter-productive. Instead, I said, “Don’t think I won’t. She turned eight seconds into eight minutes, and I still held her. It’s not because I WON’T climb on her.” He countered with, “Nah. I don’t want to do the paperwork.” Of course, I had to say something to make a joke out of it, so I quipped, “The trick is to not come off.” His phone rang, saving us from an empty conversation, and the day’s plans changed just that quick.
The new supervisor told me we had work to do, so I left Penny in the center of the round pen and went to work. The project wound up taking most of the day, and when I got back, the same fool was running Penny in circles. That was really the last straw for me, and I walked into the pen to save my horse. She stopped and let me touch her as he said, “I got her lathered up for you.” The poor little filly was covered in sweat and shaking all over. I could see the fear radiating off her like the heat from her body. I stayed quiet, preferring to avoid what my frustration would send out of my mouth, and led her out of the round pen to unsaddle her. She danced away a little as I pulled the saddle off, but stood still as I rubbed her down with a burlap sack to dry her off. I was thinking of a solution to keep this fool away from Penny without making an issue out of it. The new supervisor let the chump run Penny into a sweat, so I could not just tell the fool to leave her alone and undermine the supervisor’s authority. It was Penny herself that gave me the reason I needed to take control of her training. While we were all working on our separate projects, Penny was in the round pen by herself. One of the other guys was on a tractor discing up a field in sight of the round pen but far enough away to not be a factor. He told me he watched her while he was pulling the disc, and Penny would run circles and buck on her own. Then she would rest for a minute before running and bucking again. The new supervisor chimed in and told me Penny was running in circles “full speed” with no one around when he pulled up to get into the office. That information from two different sources was what I needed to step up her training. Penny is “round pen sour”, meaning she has bucked and fought so long in the round pen that she thinks her role in the pen is to buck and fight. The solution was pretty simple to me, and I told everybody (supervisor included), “No more round pen for Penny.”
It is the cowboy way to say what you mean and mean what you say. The caveat is that my mouth binds me to action, which meant all Penny’s training now has to come from the saddle. To keep in plain, when I said, “No more round pen”, it meant I had to ride the horse that just threw a man twice then kicked him for good measure. I am not one to back away from a challenge, and I got my chance the very next day. It was time to pregnancy check the artificially inseminated heifers, and they needed to be moved to the corral. I brushed and saddled Penny, leading her to the hitching post with the other horses. My theory was that being with the other horses would help Penny feel comfortable as well as letting her see how the other horses acted under saddle. I climbed into the saddle, doing my best to regulate my emotions. Penny would feel it if I was nervous, which would, in turn, make her more nervous. My emotions travel down the reins to her, so I took many deep, calming breaths while we rode out to move the cows. To my surprise, Penny barely acted up.
I expected a ride filed with bucking and bolting, but that was not the case at all. Instead, Penny walked along calmly beside the other horses. I kept her near Patch, her favorite pasture buddy, and I could feel her figuring out what was going on. I could also feel her resistance as she decided whether or not to follow my cues. Each time she gave me her head, I was sure to give her a kind word or pat her neck, letting myself get excited for her. My approval travels down the reins, too, and I wanted her to know she was doing well. As she became more relaxed, I moved her away from Patch and into the lead of the group. She made it a few lengths ahead then froze in place when she realized she was alone. Poor girl was so timid, she would not even walk away from the other horses. I let the others catch up, and we moved as a group to the cows. Penny showed me she lacked confidence so I made it a point to trot a little ahead to let her know she was safe. Each time, we made it a little farther before she panicked and turned around again. Each time she panicked, we repeated the process until we made it to the cows.
Penny’s first real ride outside the round pen was a success, and it gave me insight to her mind I very much needed. Not only did we get the cows moved without incident Penny and I started building the most important part of our relationship – trust. She has to trust that I will not hurt her before any training will even start to take hold. For me, that means gentle hands, light pressure on the bit and being mindful of my own emotions. Penny will undoubtedly feel what I feel, so my own emotional awareness is paramount to her bonding with me. Being able to stay calm on Penny’s back also lets me observe her behavior to make me a better leader for her. On our first ride, Penny told me she gets scared by herself, she does not like the way the bit feels in her mouth, she dances away from her fears, and that she lacks confidence. She also told me the bucking was indeed a learned behavior. Taking her out of the round pen was the best thing for her.
In the open pasture with the green spring grass pushing through the brown remnants of last year’s final grasp at life, Penny is able to be who she is. In the calm times on her back, I let the peace of the spring season calm me as I listen to the things Penny tells me. Of course, Spring is a peaceful season with its flurry of new life battling for the sunshine is as strange as saying Penny talks to me, but one of the true joys of being human is the ability to listen with all our senses, not just our ears. Penny’s ears were constantly shifting positions as her focus alternated from me to her surroundings. Both ears perk forward when she cows come into view, and she concentrates on them for a moment. She lets loose a snort tat sounds like a growl to let me know she is not at all comfortable with any of this cowhorse mess. When she is afraid, her ears flick forward at full attention and tremble ever so slightly; but, when she is really afraid, she dances backward watching the source of her fear as she moves away at a brisk clip. And when she has had too much, she throws her head against every command on the bit before she bolts. The fear becomes more intense than she can handle, and her only defense is to run full speed away from it. Unfortunately for us both, she does not realize she carries the fear inside her as she carries me back to her only place of refuge – the barn. Poor Penny has kidnapped me more times than I care to admit on paper as she makes a mad dash with that crazy speed that helped her species escape predators and win crowns. The encouraging note is that once she learns to control her body instead of bolting in panic, she will be a force to reckon with.
I have mixed feelings about losing Bow, but he is not far. I still get to ride with him on occasion and still enjoy watching him work cows. My supervisor told me that Bow was tied to the railing at the other unit while cows moved down the alleyway in front of him. Bow began pawing the ground and snorting, anxious to get a cow and frustrated about missing out on work. I am hoping that Penny inherited a bit of Bow’s cow sense from their shared sire. She cannot replace Bow, and I am not looking for her to replace Bow. Penny is Penny, and Bow is Bow. They are each their own unique horse. Bow, however, is more than just another state pony. Over the last two years, we have bonded closely as these rangy cows took us on one adventure after another. He and I get to share adventures every now and then, but it’s always just temporary. The rides feel different somehow, as if I am refusing to let go or trying to make one more memory with my friend.
Change is inevitable, and every cowboy has to change horses once in a while. In twelve short months, I will meet the parole board asking for their permission to make the biggest change in my life – returning to society. It will certainly be a welcome change, wrought with its own set of challenges. Losing Bow as my primary horse and dealing with all Penny’s problems teaches me valuable lessons that will undoubtedly help me make my transition home. Even now, Bow is teaching me the value of friendship, and Penny Two-Stockings? Penny is teaching me the value of patiently leading toward healing, the value of facing a challenge head on; and, most importantly, she is teaching me how to hang on to a dream when the world is flying by at a breakneck pace when one misstep could spell disaster. That sounds a lot like parole to me.