A Viewers Guide to Roadside Animals.

Few things—if anything—in life gave my Dad more pleasure than horses and cattle. He knew them well and worked them like few have the ability to do.

But even when not working, you might find him out in the corral “messing” with the horses. You’d often find him horseback in the pasture, or sitting on the tailgate of the pickup truck, or on the tractor seat after winter feeding just watching his cows, long beyond his original reason for being there.

When traveling, he always noticed cattle and horses in the pastures and on the open range flying past the windshield. He’d comment on how “slick” (or maybe “poor”) the cows looked, admire the growing calves, point out a well-made range bull, praise horses and colts.

While not as practiced at it as Dad, it’s a practice I picked up from him. Our car often hears comments about grazing cattle, usually accompanied by regret that almost all of them nowadays are black. Sighting a herd of our favored Herefords gleaming red and white in the sun is a rare and precious thing. Were you with us, you’d also hear my mockery every time we pass one of those yellow diamond-shaped roadside signs warning of livestock grazing on open range—with a picture of a dairy cow on it.

But, perhaps, my favorite remark concerning roadside animals is one I heard decades ago from a rodeo traveling pal; a comment that betrays a real love for the sport. Drive past horses in a pasture and Marlowe “Bird” Carroll would likely say, “You think those horses would buck?”

I still wonder.

Two-gaited horses.

While growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, we watched a lot of Westerns on television at my house. Dad, who was an inspired horseman and worked as a cowboy as often as not, got a kick out of them. He more or less saw them as comedies.

The stereotypical characters and guns that never needed reloading and repetitive stories were part of that. But, mostly, it was the horses. While he never said so, he probably believed the casting directors who hired equines must have specified that only two-gaited horses need apply. 

A brief explanation: where we come from out West, horses travel with four basic gaits—walk, trot, lope, and run. (Elsewhere, lope and run are often referred to as canter and gallop.)

But if you believed what you saw on the screen, horses have only two gaits: walk and run. Sometimes, a “cowboy” (which, on television, included all kinds of characters who wouldn’t know which end of the cow gets up first) would mount up in town and walk his horse down the street (about the only time TV horses were seen to walk). But more often, he would swing into the saddle and lay the spurs to his horse and race off down the street at a dead run raising a cloud of dust. And he would run his horse nonstop along wagon roads, up mountain trails, across wide deserts, through streams, and everywhere else he went until reining up in a sliding stop at his destination.

It’s likely that horses with stars in their eyes back then rehearsed the walk only briefly and ignored the trot and lope altogether, concentrating on the endless run in order to secure a part in a television horse opera. Real horses, if they watched their on-screen counterparts, probably grinned at their high-speed antics like Dad did.

The lengthy horseback sequences in the Coen brothers’ version of True Grit are among many reasons I admire that movie. Endless plodding (at a walk) across the landscape might seem tedious for some to watch. But it doesn’t hurt to give viewers a taste of the monotony that traveling horseback can be.

Of course, folks who know horses know you can (and do) trot or lope at times to change things up a bit—you just won’t see it happen on TV.

Point and shoot.

I am not a photographer. But, in the course of magazine writing I am often expected to provide pictures to illustrate stories. So, most of what I shoot is journalistic or documentary-type stuff.

But when something interesting in an artistic sense presents itself, I point and shoot and try to capture it. I look for odd angles and unusual arrangements, strange combinations and patterns of colors—things that look almost abstract or graphic in nature. None of the photos here are posed; all were taken on the fly. Only a couple of the images are cropped; the rest are full-frame just as the camera caught them.

Take a look if you’ve got the time. But remember—I am not a photographer.

At the rodeo.

The behind-the-scenes rodeo photos were taken at a high school and a college rodeo. Then there are a couple of shots representing success. Finally, a pair of detail pictures of Jeff Wolf’s monumental sculpture “Rodeo” that I think capture the art’s dynamic action.

At the ranch.

A skyline shot of gathering cattle off Midnight Creek starts this selection, followed by several pictures from a branding. The set ends where it started, with an Idaho ranch horse with a mecate and hackamore hanging from the saddle horn.

At work.

Working with leather is a job, a craft, a skill, and an art. While doing stories on a couple of those artists I captured a few behind-the-scenes photos of some of the tools and materials the artists employ, ending with saddles for sale and an extreme close-up of a maker’s mark stamped into leather.

 

At play.

Guitars can look as good as they sound. This lone photo comes from the practice pen of Mary Kaye and the Kaye Sisters as they blended bended strings and harmonized sweet voices.

      

Swapping horse stories with Alan Day.

A few years ago, H. Alan Day co-authored the ranch memoir, Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, with his sister, Sandra Day O’Connor.

Not long ago, he wrote The Horse Lover: A Cowboy’s Quest to Save the Wild Mustangs. It’s the story of how he built Mustang Meadows Ranch, the first government-sponsored wild horse sanctuary established in the United States. In addition, the book relates a wealth of stories about the author’s lifelong love of horses, with tales of his adventures and misadventures. I was asked to review the book for Roundup Magazine and I wrote, among other things, “Those who don’t know horses will find this book an engaging introduction. Readers who do will find themselves nodding in understanding page after page.”

I had the pleasure of meeting Alan Day at the Western Writers of America convention a few months ago. He’s a cowboy through and through and as nice a guy as you’ll ever meet. He asked me to write a little something about horses for his web site (http://thehorselover.com). At the site, you’ll learn more about Alan and his remarkable book, The Horse Lover. My “guest” post is here: http://thehorselover.com/blog/.

Stop by and visit Alan Day. He’d love to swap horse stories with you.