John Vogel
Short, fat, angry, and powerful.
Nicknamed Shortbus, she lived in a mustang pen isolated, mostly because her bites, kicks and overall poor attitude didn’t mix well with the other, more civilized horses. She came out of the Oregon Badlands, bought for cheap, never trained, never ridden, and ended up as my project.
She was sold as green with a rumor of saddle broke—a way to say “we got a saddle on her at some point.” Despite all that, she was a typical mustang from East Oregon. The local farriers refused to approach her, the vets said maybe if she was as sedated as Keith Richards on a Sunday morning, and no one actually brought a saddle within 25 yards of her pen.
In the first two weeks, she attempted to escape six times. I say attempt because she didn’t get farther than the hay barn after breaking every post, board, beam, and panel that I installed. She let herself into the pasture only once, where she managed to bully horses that outweighed her by 800 pounds. Every time required rope, gloves, and a first aid kit on standby.
After a month, I realized she surpassed her initial cost of $150 and was eating up money like a congressional aid package. My greatest achievement so far was tossing a saddle blanket on her which stayed on for a whole 30 seconds before she bucked it off, trampled it and proceeded to run countless victory laps. She went from Shortbus to Cooler Queen in a month.
The common method to tame or “break” a wild horse, was to simply get tack on them, jump on, and withstand the bucking—a natural response the horse has to a mountain lion jumping on its back—until the horse decides it’s ready to give up. The image of a broken neck kept me away from this.
Word of the mutinous mare spread, and while at a barbeque, I was informed the secret to equestrian success was not more than 600 yards away from where Cooler Queen rampaged, an old cowboy turned high school history teacher.
He went by Duke, even though it was a cliche, based off the stories though, you would think he was the first to bear the name. His father’s profession was wrangling mustangs east of town and bringing them in to be sold. Due to proximity, it became his too. He attended high school classes two days a week, spending the other five wrangling horses that had more in common with battle tanks than actual horses. Local farriers treated him as a patron saint, rodeo cowboys removed their hats for him, and anyone who saddled horses in the area knew his name and reputation, except me.
“You share a fence with the Jedi Master. Go ask him,” a local trainer offered.
So off I went, 6-pack of Rainier in hand, and knocked on his door. The man who answered walked with a cane, wore a shawl cardigan sweater over a flannel button down, slacks and house shoes. It was like shaking hands with a hydraulic press, cold, hard, painful. I explained my situation carefully, avoided flowery language and painted a picture of a problem child horse that I couldn’t solve.
He stroked his chin, looked off at the sun setting, and simply said “7:00 a.m.” and closed the door, not even looking at the beer.
At 7:00 a.m. we stood, drinking coffee, not saying a word. He watched Cooler Queen, watched her ears, her eyes, her hooves. After 20 minutes, he plainly stated “she’s tense. Uno mas, please,” handing me his coffee mug.
By 9:00 a.m. he wrote out a training plan not based on time but emotional progress.
“She doesn’t trust you, doesn’t trust me, doesn’t trust anyone other than herself, and I can’t blame her,” he offered. “She’s fended for herself for most of her life post-leaving her lead mare. You ain’t shit on her shoes at this point.”
The plan started with a simple instruction to sit on the top rail of the pen, read a book—he recommended The Iliad—and when I was done, set up a chair and sit inside the pen and read History of the Peloponnesian War until she wanted to know what I was reading. At that point, continue reading but give her a saddle blanket. If I still had all my teeth, call for the next instruction.
It took 3 weeks, but after much reading, I had a horse nudging the book out of view asking for scratches. I called that night, only to hear; “No blanket, mount her. If she lets you, you’re good to go.”
You don’t question the master. The next morning, I walked in, no blanket, no saddle, no rope, and threw one leg up on her, sat up straight and froze in position like a Civil War general cast in bronze. She didn’t move, didn’t buck, didn’t care. Hands on my hips, I nudged my legs in the direction I wanted her to go, and believing I just lit a fuse on a keg of black powder, she moved. For the first time in her life, the Cooler Queen allowed a human to sit on her and not be stomped into ground meat. No bucking, no beatings, no fighting.
She was still short, fat and powerful, but she was just a bit cooler.
