Amber the Cowpony

AMBER THE COWPONY

I believe some horses are born with the ability to reason to a certain extent. For instance, when I lived in California, one of my jobs was to ride out every morning to round up the rental horses for the day. My favorite mount was Amber, a big red mare that always seemed to understand what I was doing. She would correctly second guess my every move, for she seemed to know instinctively where I needed to be in order to get the horses to go exactly where I wanted them to go.

I tried using Comanche, one of the rental horses, once. How useless that was! He was so used to being a part of the herd, he just wanted to run with the others and mirror everything they did. He made my job exceedingly difficult. For example, at one point we were on a hill and I was trying to skirt the trees that were growing along its side when the gelding decided to duck directly under the low-hanging branches. He managed to tuck his head down low enough to avoid them, but the saddle horn got caught on a very low limb and when it finally let go, it got me in the stomach, knocking me out of the saddle. Luckily I was able to hold onto the horse, and, in case you're wondering, I didn't get hurt.

Amber, on the other hand, was very trustworthy, which she had to be since most of the time the ground we had to travel on was so dusty I couldn't see a thing in front of me. While following the herd into the yard, we had to scramble through the dust they kicked up. Part of the route they took involved a creek that cut through the path. I could never see that creek, so I had to trust Amber to know when we got there because she'd have to jump over it. She never missed it. Not once. My life was in her hands and she never let me down.