This is Cash. We got him when he was 5...we thought he'd be a team roping horse because he had been trained for that but turns out that wasn't the life he preferred. Every time the steer was caught & then dallied on to the saddle horn, he started bucking. He threw 2 people, one of them my oldest daughter. The other, a man who insisted on trying him because he thought my teen daughter must've been doing something wrong. He got thrown too & fractured his wrist. We didn't know because he kept roping...he told us a year later.
Since I'm terrified of any of my horses ending up in bad hands...we kept him & set about finding what he does like to do...turns out he doesn't mind doing anything else & was great with my younger girls when they were little. They rode him bareback with halters or bridles on, running through the woods, jumping over logs, wading into ponds, took picnics with them, played cops & robbers or cowboys & indians, showed low level things like 4H & local barrel shows. My oldest daughter taught him to barrel race & put a lot of training into him.
I used to find him with flowers braided in his mane quite a bit...he's got a gorgeous mane & tail. His color is considered dun because he has a black stripe on his back. He also has black tiger stripes on his lower legs.
As my girls have gotten older, he became a back-up barrel horse that did pretty well. They brought him to youth rodeos & highschool rodeos. He doesn't mind breakaway roping, but he's only done it for practice.
They've been working on teaching him to play polo & he's doing well with it...he's certainly got the speed, but he doesn't like the sound of the mallet hitting the ball, so this summer we're going to try ear plugs. Maybe that'll help.
He's the one I trail ride on when I go. He sure is beautiful and very sweet with people & behaves well with other horses when he's being ridden/worked/standing next to other horses at rodeos. But if he's loose in a pasture, he's not always great with other horses. When we first got him he was very head shy & anxious, eventually he got to where he'd let us hug his head & he's as mellow as can be now. A horseman we respect said it takes a lifetime to make a good horse, but most people don't want to or can't take the time required. A few years ago he jumped over a gate & cleared it, but didn't land right. He did something to his hip & was off on it. The vet said give him time off & he ended up having almost 2 years off but he came back completely sound. I thought he was done & so many people said they wouldn't wait that long for a horse to get better. But, what else were we going to do with him & no one would want a horse they can't use. This isn't the first time we've had horses that needed time off...they came back too. Every time I see him smoke a barrel pattern, work at improving in polo or just do anything the girls ask, I feel grateful that we didn't give up on him. Every so often he sees the chiropractor for maintenance. He's in his mid-teens now. His best friend is Red.
I'll post about our very special Red-man in another post.
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