"The Princess"

Remember "The Princess" from my last post? Affectionately known as "My Little Hell Bitch"?

Well... some days... she is a serious

fricken' dragon.

This horse will take advantage of anyone that she can. She has zinged and zanged with more people than any other horse in our barn. She will pin her ears and snake out at you if you're blanketing her and don't stand your ground. If you don't let her know you're up their on your back, she will run you into a wall. 

Then... other days... she is a complete

& utter... donkey.

She is heavily attached to her sister which we also have in training. So much so that if her sister is taken out of her eye sight she will lose her fricken mind. She paws, and paws, and paws, and paws. Sometimes she just randomly forgets how to stop. She goes into roaring heat at the drop of a hat... heat that turns her laggy and numb.

But, My Little Hell Bitch... she can...

cut ya'll. 

The horse comes to the party in a big way, and she is only in her derby (four year old) year.

You have to lope the fricken legs off her, and not just circles, you have to make her work, and think, and bend. Hours later when you walk her into the pen, she goes in licking her lips ready to eat a cow alive. She is cool, and she is outrageously talented, and it's all bubbling to the surface now.

& this is her.

In a rare serene moment.

& as alluded too in my last post, she is leaving back home to Canada for the Spring/Summer/Fall shows. It's very hard to see her go. When I worked part-time for Boss-Lady a year ago, "The Princess" was there. She wasn't terribly easy to ride, and often freaked me out. When I came back to work for Boss-Lady this year, "The Princess" was the only original horse still with her. She was the only horse I knew, and really... aside from Boss-Lady... the only thing I knew. I clung to her, and I also found that apparently I had learnt a lot in a year, so had she, we clicked.

Now, this weekend, she is jumping on a trailer and heading up north - perhaps she will come back, but she may not. The reality of it is that she isn't mine, she has an owner, a real mom, who probably has her own nicknames for her that they just share between the two of them.

Sometimes, it is hard.

"Our Horses"

As a loper you are with "your horses" day in, day out, away from home, at home, good days, bad days, all the days... and they begin to feel like your very big, sometimes obnoxious, sometimes talented family members.

You begin to feel like you are their "parent". The trainer is more of a teacher, their owners who come to ride must seem to them like their students (... or perhaps their jobs, because they know when cows are involved they're working.) Then there's the lopers, the one's that hand them off to go to "school/job", the one's that dress their boo-boos, the one's that give them baths, hand-walk them, etc. etc. etc.

For example in my string of horses many of them have a nickname that only I call them..

There is "Mr. Handsome", "Big Boy", "Bubba/Bubs", "Bug", "Rey Baby", "Moo",

90% of these nicknames have absolutely nothing to do with their real names...

and then there is my favourite, the one that I almost see as mine until their real owner comes and i'm plummeted back to reality. She is affectionally known as "The Princess" to others, but between just her and I... "My Little Hell Bitch."

& let me tell you my readers, she is just that.

& sometimes, we lopers... well we grow pretty attached, and darn does it ever hurt when a horse gets taken out of training.