![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Ranger was an idiot. He was also my favourite horse. Back in the day, he was an acclaimed racer. Any time I mention his name at the local racetrack, everyone remembers him. This is despite him having raced almost twenty years ago in another province altogether.
He was a tall, hotblooded strawberry roan Standardbred. I affectionately called him the moose. He had a giant head and the body of an emaciated milk cow. He always looked on the verge of starvation, but he was just a naturally scrawny horse. I couldn't ride him bareback for long because his protuberant spine chafed the skin off my tailbone. When he wanted to, he could run like a cheetah with its tail on fire. The trouble was, he saved his high speeds for when running shouldn't have been an option.
He ran from such terrifying things as woodpiles, chickens, snowdrifts, his own shadow, and possibly from the imaginary snowy, shadowy, wooden chickens clucking in his head. He ran in ever-tightening circles to the left, and when I rode him, I had to keep the right rein so tight that my arm would ache for hours afterwards. He loved it when I put him on a longeing line and let him run in big circles. He'd do that for hours. But when I rode him and asked him to run, he balked and stomp-walked, or ran so arrhythmically that it was impossible to sit him comfortably.
Although scraps of paper and the like gave him the terrors, he didn't have fear where it belonged. He had no problem with charging through a tightly-strung barbed wire fence, galloping off a small cliff, or reaching down to nuzzle a porcupine. One time, he escaped during hunting season, and leaped in the way of a pickup truck. When the truck screeched to a halt, he tried to jump into the back to join a freshly-killed deer.
The ponies were far more clever and stoic. Horses and ponies like to roll around on their backs. It's like horse yoga or something. They get a good stretch out of it, and it scratches their itches. Occasionally, they'll get their legs caught in a fence or a tree. When this happened to any of our ponies, they stopped moving and puzzled out how to extricate themselves. If they knew they were good and trapped, they whinnied for help and wait calmly until someone came along to rescue them. This was not the case with Ranger. Whenever he got caught, he flew into a frenzy of threshing legs, flailing around until either he or the fence was destroyed. Luckily for him, he never managed to break a leg.
Despite his idiocy, he was a clever horse. He just turned the smarts off and on when he felt like it, using his intelligence for evil. For example, I once loosely draped the braided leather reins of his bridle around a post while I picked something off the ground. He gave me a mulish look, drew his head back slowly until the reins were taut, then gave a sudden jerk, snapping the reins in half. If he'd just walked away, the reins would have slid to the ground undamaged, but from the devilish look in his eyes, I could tell he knew this action would be destructive, and he revelled in this thought.
Ranger had received extensive training in dressage and jumping, but refused to do anything with it. One day, while I was riding him, he decided to show me his stuff and did tricks that I'd only seen in Olympic dressage events. I was never able to get him to repeat this process. And neither would he jump anything while I was on his back, although he wasn't afraid to beautifully clear five-foot fences from a standing start when he felt like it.
One time, I took him out for a long-distance ride and packed lunches for both of us. I had a ham sandwich, and I brought a couple of flakes of timothy for him. Around lunchtime, I unsaddled him and tossed his hay down for him. Then I got out my sandwich, and, just as I was about to take a bite, Ranger devoured it in one big gulp. And then he laughed at me while I told him horses are supposed to be vegan.
Ranger had a very strong bond to my two ponies Dolly and Cocoa. Wherever they went, he needed to go, too. One time, we had the ponies hooked up to a wagon while Ranger stayed behind in the pasture. He had an unholy freak-out, running back and forth, squealing, and rearing up.
We had an Australian dingo fence. This electric fence ran 10,000 volts (no amps, though), and all of the animals had a healthy respect for it. Well, this time around, Ranger decided to hell with it, and stood back, huffing and puffing and generally getting up the nerve to charge the fence. After a few snorts and a bit of pawing at the ground, he made a run for it and hit the fence just as it was sending out its most powerful zap. Ranger was sent flying back onto his arse, where he sat like a big dog, complete with woofing sounds. A few moments later, and he was back on his feet, still running back and forth, but with a much greater distance between him and the fence.
But with all this silliness, he really was a great horse. He was kind-hearted, and very cautious around smaller creatures (like people and cats), making sure never to kick, bite, or step on someone.
Almost fifteen years ago, when I'd moved away from home, Mom's arthritis worsened and she could no longer take care of the horses by herself. She found new homes for them. Ranger went on to become a therapy horse for troubled kids. I heard he did marvelously and was loved by all. I still miss him.
![[Me and fake Ranger]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/191767598d5c/2919457-202253/www.shanmonster.com/gallery/shan/shan003.jpg "[Me and fake Ranger]")
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
OMG
Date: 2004-11-24 10:01 pm (UTC)From:Re: OMG
Date: 2004-11-24 10:11 pm (UTC)From:Bad dice rolling.
Date: 2004-11-24 10:02 pm (UTC)From:Re: Bad dice rolling.
Date: 2004-11-24 10:10 pm (UTC)From:Horses.
Date: 2004-11-24 10:31 pm (UTC)From:Re: Horses.
Date: 2004-11-24 11:11 pm (UTC)From:Someday, I'll have to write about my dogsledding adventures, and also go over even more cat, goat, and horse stories.