Songs/stories Real Western Mornin’

This started out as a song. I wanted something a little faster with some snap to it, as I am inclined to sing (and love) ballads. I wanted to get across that so many mornings are a lot alike, especially at calving time. We in ranching have a routine we all fall in to. And even tho’ much of it is not really all that fun, we still enjoy it… when looking back at it!

Most cool mornings a young horse, and some older ones, will have a hump in their back and the saddle may stick up far enough in back to stick a watermelon under the back skirts! There are several ways to fix this, and I speak of one, kicking them in the belly (or other nether regions), but most people will walk them around a bit and finally just get on and take off. If you have cows calving that need checked you really don’t have all that much time to longe one around or run them around in the round pen, until they warm up a bit. Oh sure, you could get up earlier, saddle them and let them stand while you eat breakfast (something many older, more experienced cowboys who don’t seem to need as much sleep, do) but heck, who ever gets enough sleep during calving? 🙂

And for all you animal lovers, remember, there is almost nothing a man on foot can do with just his extremities, that can harm a horse even close to how much harm another horse can do to him, and that is how pecking orders are established in the horse herd (and rural schools, as I recall)….a kick in the belly really doesn’t hurt a horse so much, as it impresses on them that you are higher up in the pecking order and they must do as you ask… well… at least that is the theory…. I have known of and had horses that a kick in the belly really didn’t change their attitude much… maybe I wasn’t kicking hard enough.

I think perhaps those who do it think it does more than it actually does and thus gives them courage, much like pulling the wild hair’s out of a horses face does….as Ben Green described in one of his books. And when you step across a horse and you are relaxed and comfortable and not tight and nervous, the horse knows it. That might explain why a horses hardly ever bucks very hard when a person who could care less if they do buck, steps on.

And I have had many horses fall with me. Matter of fact I have been hurt far worse when horses fell with me than when I have been bucked off. And unless you can not physically get back on, you just cowboy up and do the work, because there is no one else to do it, most times….so even when your knee gets wrenched and hurt, and you limp when you walk, you suck it up, get on and do the work…until you can come home and whine to your wife about it, anyway… 🙂

As to the rest of the story behind the song, well.. I think it’s pretty self explanatory…. pups and pairs don’t usually get along, we don’t just drink beer and get in fights out here, as the movies like to portray us doing so much of the time, and yes, seems to me like most the people who are successful at this life, have a good spouse… sabe? 🙂