...
LOOKING
BACK ...
A
Horse Story
by
Lynn Bueling
Most
people like a good horse story. Through the years, countless numbers
of them have run through the pages of our books: Black Beauty, Smoky
the Cow Horse, the Black Stallion, lately War Horse, plus many
others. For the most part, the stories follow a pattern of good
times followed by bad, then ending happily with the horse living out
his days in friendly surroundings.
The
first book series that gripped my attention as a young lad was the
trilogy by Mary O'Hara - My
Friend Flicka,
Thunderhead,
and The Green Grass of
Wyoming.
Flicka inherited a strain of mustang blood that made her hard to
tame, ie until a boy adopts her, then the above mentioned pattern
develops. In Thunderhead,
Flicka gives birth to the horse Thunderhead, the inheritor of his
mother's wild mustang blood. The boy's father wants to geld him.
It's there the tension begins. The boy comes of age as a rancher in
The Green Grass
of Wyoming.
The books can hold the interest of any age group and are on my list
to read again sometime.
For
the most part, the horse culture was so ingrained in our society that
they were taken for granted, used up, and cast away. A horse needed
to have accomplished something above the ordinary to be noticed. In
1885, newspapers quoted the following lines from an obituary: “At
the conclusion of the services at the church, the procession will at
once proceed to the grave where all that remains of the deceased will
be laid to rest. The hearse will be drawn by Fastboy, the well-known
five-year-old Hambletonian who has but recently reduced his record to
2:32.”
For
the past few years I've been a fan of a horse named Tipperary. His
history came to light when reading about the remount service in World
War I. On the battlefields of Europe, horses, in huge numbers,
became targeted or suffered indiscriminate deaths from artillery
shells, gas, and disease. The availability of replacements on the
European continent had disappeared, and buyers looked elsewhere to
buy remounts. Because of our military's dependance on horses and
mules, the government established the U. S. Remount Service in 1908
whose task was to maintain a dependable supply. They even formed a
breeding program to fill quotas.
Shift
the scene to Camp Crook, South Dakota, 1915. The town, located in
the extreme northwest corner of the state, was relatively close to
Fort Keogh, the army's largest remount station, near Miles City,
Montana. French buyers came down to Camp Crook to attend a horse
sale. They inspected each horse individually to determine its
suitability as a war horse. Tipperary did not make the cut because
he demonstrated an outlaw nature.
Since
his owners realized he would never make a saddle horse, they put him
into competition with the rugged cowboys who thought they could ride
any bronc. The reputation of the horse started growing; he bucked
off all of his would-be riders. One of the first men to mount up and
get thrown gave name to the horse. As he rose from the dirt and
dusted himself off, he started singing words from a song of the time,
“It's a long, long way to Tipperary.”
Rodeo
rules differed greatly from those in today's Pro Rodeo Cowboys
rulebook, if, indeed,they even existed. A horse was held in place in
the middle of an arena and released when the rider got in the saddle.
He could ride for as long as he stayed in the saddle, if he kept his
feet in the stirrups. One man early in Tipperary's career did ride
him, but people seem to discount the ride. Why? The horse limped
into the arena because of a cut and sore foot. Prize money probably
motivated the owners to permit the ride even with the injury. The
SPCA existed at this time, but who checked on such things out here?
The
years started passing by, and the number of Tipperary's victories
mounted. Not until 1920 did anyone score a qualified ride on him.
The rider, Yakima Canutt, rode him successfully in a muddy arena
where the horse never gained firm footing. The following year, the
same man rode him to the finish, but spectators on one side of the
arena booed and protested that Canutt had lost a stirrup on the
offside where judges couldn't see. It should have disqualified him,
but he received the prize money. Canutt went on to the movie
business in Hollywood and often stunted for John Wayne, including the
famous runaway scene in the movie “Stagecoach.”
One
other man scored a successful ride in 1926 when the horse was 21
years old. With that defeat his owner finally released him into the
prairie to live out his days. The final tally of Tipperary's
victories is somewhat elusive because of poor record keeping, but
best guess estimates place it at about 91. Unfortunately, this story
does not end happily. In 1932, a blizzard caught Tipperary in the
open. They found him in the spring, his bones picked clean by
coyotes.
