One-man team

We are big fans of NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me news-quiz program. A few weeks ago, they talked about a German girl whose parents refused to get her something as impractical as a horse. They compromised and bought her a cow, which she promptly turned into a hunter-jumper and with which she began touring the show circuit.

I identified with the girl; I have recently begun launching myself over fences and my horse isn't up to the task. What's a girl to do? Then I looked out my window I saw the two ox steers. Aha!

When I looked, Reddy, the older, larger one, had finished his own feed, pushed Set off of his and was now munching contentedly. Good thing I only need one to ride.

"I can still eat you!" I yelled out the door to the bullying bovine.

Jack is working on getting them lead, so every morning he halters them and walks them down to the barn for breakfast. 

Sometimes following a rooster.

 Chickens are really bad at hide and seek. (But really good at it for their eggs!)

 You can practically see the yoke, they are paired so well.

 On Sunday, I asked for a turn. Remember how well they lined up and led for him? Well, this is what I got:

Think they can read my mind?

Tally-haw? Yee-ho?

You know how great it feels to put on a favorite pair of jeans you haven't fit into in a while? How you get to skip the adjustment stage and move right into the total comfort of familiarity?

That was me on Monday, sitting in an English saddle, riding Sailor the Thoroughbred in patterns such as H-X-M and in 20 meter circles. I was wearing gloves with velcro backs, breeches with knee patches and a helmet. There were cavaletti poles in the corner and girls running around with half-chaps on.

I held my hands in thumb-to-thumb position above his withers and focused on the flexion in my elbows. I went into two-point and tried to pick up the correct diagonal. Somehow, in the middle of Wyoming I had walked into a building and gone back East for the afternoon. I felt like a fairy tale character who discovered home was right around the corner all along.

My lesson followed that of a local doctor. He and I chatted for a minute about eventing and I said something to the effect that my husband would never be an English rider. "He's a cowboy," I explained.


Many cowboys have come to love three-day eventing, he said. "It's the adrenaline."

Jack in breeches? That'll be the day.