The Fun of Driving – Horses, that is

            Another memory of childhood on Greaves’ Pony Farm was the parades in which we participated.  Daddy had a team of beautiful silver dapple mares that were often used for birthday parties and in most of the local parades around my hometown of Lamesa.  We had a chuck wagon that was specially built to fit the Shetland team, and my parents made a cover for it to use sometimes as a covered wagon.  I always loved to ride in the wagon, but also enjoyed riding along behind it, usually on Daffy, and usually with her foal trotting along beside the wagon.  We were always applauded by the crowds that lined the streets as we did the Rodeo Parade, the Christmas Parade, and others around O’Donnel, Tahoka, and Lamesa.  When I was younger, about age five, my dad would ride his big horse, Ginger, and I would be led by him, happily trotting along on Twinkle, while Daddy carried my baby sister, Marcia, in his lap.

            However, I remember one of the parades most distinctly, and not for the usual fun of the experience.  This time it was a Fiesta Parade, so Mother and Daddy dressed up Mexican style and decided that instead of my riding a horse, I should ride a donkey!  Now that does not seem like a bad idea to go along with the theme of the day, but we soon learned that a donkey does NOT ride like a horse.  In fact, a regular saddle unless specially rigged, tends to slip off of the donkey’s back onto its neck, and that is a scary place to try to keep your balance, especially when you are only six years old.  I started crying and my mother made me stay on the donkey, just slipped out of the saddle and finished the parade riding behind the saddle which was far too near the donkey’s head to make riding possible.  Mother was all attired in her Mexican style dress, smiling as she walked along beside me, quietly threatening me if I didn’t stop crying and “smile”!  I learned at an early age that the show must go on!

            Since I was a child, I have lived with horses of one kind or another and have had numerous close calls, some frightening, some humorous.  I mentioned that my parents raised Shetland ponies when I was very young, and one of my fondest memories of childhood, living in the country, was sometimes riding and sometimes driving a pony to church, which was at the edge of my grandfather’s farm, where we lived.  It seemed that each time I had a ride to church; most times I ended up walking home because my “steed” would rub his bridle off and beat me home.  One time I got in trouble because Tommy, my little sorrel stallion that I loved to drive, got away and went running home with the cart bouncing along, urging him to go ever faster until he ran through a walk-through gate, which unfortunately was a little narrower than the cart!  The cart made it through, but not in the same shape that it started through.  We never did get it straightened out completely.

            Years later after I was married and living in Denton, Texas, I was breaking a beautiful stallion, Bond Peter Piper, who had not even been halter broke until he was almost twelve, to drive pulling a cart.  After only a couple of days ground driving him, that is walking behind him driving him without his being hooked to a cart, and then a time or two walking beside the cart, I felt that he was ready for me to get in.  Unfortunately I was wrong.  As soon as I got in the cart, he decided that he did not like that weight that he was suddenly being asked to pull and started off running full speed toward the barn, completely unaware of the chain link fence, until he ran headlong into it!  It took several minutes to untangle the mess of wire, harness, horse, and shafts of the cart.

            From that day, you would think that I would have learned my lesson, but being sure of myself, and a little naïve of the real needs to train a horse to drive in the show ring, I took Peter Piper only a week or two later to the Dallas State Fair, which was also the site of the National AMHA Miniature Horse Show that year..  When we trotted into the ring for our class, I thought, “Gee, he is really doing great,” and he was, until the first horse passed him!  Since he was so inexperienced, the horse that passed startled him and he started to run.  As soon as he tried to run, his hocks hit the basket of the cart, startling him even more, and he started to buck and kick at the cart.  I was hanging on, recalling my friend’s admonition, “Don’t fall out of the cart,” as we went careening around the ring, finally coming to a stop when two ring stewards and one of the judges finally were able to get him to stop.  There was no graceful way to leave the ring after the spectacle that I had caused!  Shortly thereafter, the director of all the livestock shows at the State Fair caught up with me, and with a grin, he said, “Tony, we charge money for people to see acts like yours when they come to the rodeo.”  I must say that he reminded me of that one several times through the many years that we showed in Dallas!

            You would think that I would learn my lesson, but years later I was helping my then nine or ten year old daughter, Lauren, to learn to drive.  The little mare that she was driving suddenly got it into her mind to run away.  I decided to “straighten her out”, taking the reins, getting in the cart and she tried it with me.  I quickly stopped her, letting her know that that was not to be the case this time, only to have her rear up, upending the cart to the point, that with my two-hundred pound frame, weighing down my end of the cart, like a teeter totter, and suddenly Gorgeous, the mare, found herself suspended in air hanging by the harness, swinging in the shafts.  I had safely gotten out of the cart and just let her hang there for a few seconds.  She never tried that little trick again.

Dangerous Driving

When I was younger, we owned a miniature saddle that we could put on the older miniatures and I could ride them.  Every once in a while, we would have a news station that was interested in coming out and doing a story on the horses.  Once when I was in pre kindergarten, we had a crew come.  My dad went around showing them horses and then did the usual picking up of a foal and rocking it to sleep.  Well then at the end of the story, he was going to put the saddle on one of the horses and lead a horse around while I rode.  He picked me up, placed me on the saddle, and we started walking around.  Then the horse started bucking a little bit.  I don’t even think it was enough for the camera to see, but it was enough to scare a six year-old so naturally, I started crying.  "It’s okay; he’s just playing with you!  D..... Don’t cry…"

 By the time I was seven, I was capable of driving horses on my own so my dad trained a little brood mare named “Ima Gorgeous” for me to drive around at home.  One day, I was driving her in the front yard by myself when something spooked her.  Before I knew what was happening, Gorgeous ran straight out of the front yard, then through another gate making her way, full speed, back to the barn.  I was pulling back on her as hard as I possibly could, trying to get her to stop before breaking something or hurting one of us.  Next to the barn, we have a walker to exercise the horses that is only about four feet off the ground.  Of course Gorgeous ran right under its steel pipes as I thankfully ducked down in time.  She then took a sharp turn as my dad and the man who worked for us tried to grab her, and I was thrown out of the cart against a fence.  Quickly after this, they caught her.   After this experience, I wasn’t in a hurry to drive again for a long time.

 Several years later, I went to stay with Tammi Nuttall—a trainer from Oklahoma—for a week so she could help me with driving.  We hooked my horse, Dimitri, up to the harness and he proceeded to rear up, and being the smart creature he is, he somehow managed to tip over backward to where he was on his back with his feet in the air… and broke some of the harness.  Tammi immediately jumped out of the cart and we both began to pull the harness off of my brilliant horse so he wouldn’t injure himself further.

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