How a Great Day Quickly Deteriorates into Panic, Fear and ?

So, Friday the 18th of November I spent the day at Freemont Elementary, got to visit with Molly, Gabe and Isis. Susan even came at had lunch with them while I helped out around the school as a "Watch D.O.G.S" volunteer (Dads Of Great Students, in this case a grand-dad.

So schools over and I'm exhausted, drive home and get ready to go to a "practice" cutting (on one of the horses), I feed the horses at the house, Susan is going to meet me there so she doesn't have to wait till the wee hours for me...

Robert, the horse trainer and I get there early, I saddle up Betty (Chic's Betty Crocker) and have a quick bite of fabulous green chili at the arena grill. I go out and start warming Betty up as people trickle in and start getting ready.  We set up the arena for "cutting" and bring the cattle in, in this case we had 16 head of probably 700 pounds, maybe a little bigger...

A brief side note on cutting. A horse and rider enter a herd of cattle, select one and only one to separate from the herd and physically intervene the "cow" from returning to the herd. Of course this sounds simple BUT cattle are very herd oriented and will try all kinds of back and forth running, slamming on the brakes etc. moves to try and by-pass the horse and rider to return to the herd.  The rider has a couple of jobs. First, select a cow that the rider thinks will help the horse show "his" stuff to the judge. Second, hang the hell on and stay outta the way...

The horse, 1200 pounds of pure muscle, physically places itself in front of the "cow", "reading" the cow to try and determine what it'll do next.Moving in gut wrenching side to side motions to "block" the cows path. This may seem like the hard part, but let me assure you that the hanging on is hard for anyone, but for a 58 year old man that thinks he's 26, well that's "wrenching" to say the least.

So we get a couple of chances, each one lasting 2.5 minutes, that seems like hours and we didn't get dumped even once, Betty was FABULOUS, she is VERY, Very good at this "job"...

It gets to be about 10:30, cold and windy outside I loosen Betty's saddle, take off the bridle and leave her tied to a hitching rail while we get stuff cleaned up and she has a few minutes to dry off (it is a lot of work for the horses). 

I go outside, get the trailer ready, turn around and come up by the door. THEN I go in to get my saddle to put it in the trailer and I can't FIND the saddle, worse yet I can't find Betty, the lead rope and halter are both gone too. About 30 feet away is the "overhead door" and it's open (of course, so people can get horses in and out of the arena).

So I ask Robert, "where's Betty", thinking he moved her, he thinks I'm joking and I can't believe she's gone.

another side note - Betty is very, very good at all she does including making fine foals.  In addition to having her for the last 12-13 years, we paid $30,000.00 in cash for her in 1999. She was a 1998 NRHA Futurity Finalist finishing 10th out of over 400 horses.  I wouldn't sell her for $60,000.00 dollars today and that's a fair price.  In addition I had loosened my $3,500.00 dollar custom made (fits my ass like a glove) saddle and hung oh maybe $1200.00 dollars worth of headgear on the saddle horn... 

The Latigo arena is about 12 miles from the horse ranch.

So everyone goes outside (about 20 people or so) and walk around the Latigo grounds (some driving), checking every place we could, two hours, not a single sign except you could see a trail from the lead rope leaving the arena. 

About one AM after driving EVERY road in the Latigo housing development (surrounds the arena) we took the other three horses back to the ranch.  NOPE, she wasn't there..... Put everyone else away, dropped Robert off, went home and broke the bad news to Susan. We had bought Betty for Susan in 1999 so she could learn to rein from and experienced horse, Betty bucked her off the first day).

I set my alarm for 5:30AM so I could be at the arena at sun-up. From experience we knew she probably hadn't gone far, but there's so many fences and barbed wire around, one has to be worried about her getting scared and tangled in some bad thing... (I set the alarm but didn't get much (any) sleep).

So I drive to Latigo as the suns coming up, drive in and take a quick circle (with the truck and trailer) around the outdoors arena, low and behold, there's Betty, the saddle (still just like I left it) and headstall still hanging on the horn.  She's munching on grass next to another horse in the Latigo stalling area (they board horses), about 100 yards from the arena door she wandered out of.

I pull up the truck, jump out and call "Betty", her head flies up, she takes one look and runs over to the trailer pawing the door to get into the trailer... I let her in and we (I should say I) had a good cry...

One really good thing to know about horses is they usually stop at the first place they can find food and wander around that eating...

So after an anxious night with little sleep (for me or Susan), Betty and the rest are home waiting to torture the old man next month with another practice cutting... December 16th at the Latigo arena if you want to have a good laugh... (an old man acting like he 26). OH YEAH, I'll check and double check the knot...