In Tucumcari, I bought 3 horses, all age 3 years, who had never seen a human being until they were "rounded up" and sent through a chute into a stock trailer, then delivered to my barn. They were unloaded into the aisle where they, paniced and in shock, found a box stall each to hide in. What they taught me cannot even be fully described. There were 2 colts and a filly. Thank goodness she wasn't in foal! But we didn't know until a full year had passed. They were 1/2 Thoroughbreds. The sire was a TB stallion, a son of Jack Straw, I believe, and one colt was a solid chestnut (named him Chinquapen); the other a black & white pinto (named him Onyx) and the filly was a bay/white pinto (named her Dawn..."Dance of the Dawn", actually). These young horses had been born on sections of land - huge desert and native grass land that included a mountain of its own. I had just turned 21. I had a relative of these youngsters, my Appaloosa, "Breath of Snow" who had come to me as a "wild" weanling almost four years earlier. I had him going under saddle... these three, I couldn't even imagine getting them to that point! At first, they had to live in the 14 X 14 foot box stalls because if I let them out on the 40 acres, I'd never catch them... couldn't "catch" them in a box stall!
So, using only my instincts (taught to me by the horses I'd known), I tied a halter in each feed tub so they would need to touch it to eat their bucket feeds... I had to do that through the feed doors because it wasn't safe those first couple of days to enter a stall with any of them. It turned out that Chinquapen was Snookie's full brother and they had a rapport, so I put them beside each other (the stall dividers were screened, not solid). Chinquapen watched me working with Snookie. In 2 days I could go in and muck his stall. I tried to always move with quiet confidence - never being sudden; never moving in a creepy, preditory way. Because our aisle between the stalls was wide enough and high enough to ride in, I could let one young wild thing at a time out into that aisle to move around and give me time to muck, etc.
In the months that followed, much happened, that I will relate here over time. The lessons were profound and serve me to this day. I will tell you that Chinquapen became a dependable sweet riding horse for a lady. Riding Onyx his first (and last for me) ride took more courage than anything I had done before! And Dawn was just too sensitive to be ridden. I still dream about them (over 30 years later!) and their brother, Snookie (Breath of Snow) my beloved companion until several years ago. Snookie's photo is on the right side of this blog - me jumping him, warming up at a Pecos Valley Horsemen Horse Trials in Roswell, way back! And Onyx is the horse trotting on this old ad for the stable I had in Tucumcari (the ad is from the '70's - Fox Fire started there in 1973). We had dozens and dozens of good horses we trained there and taught on and boarded (an herbal barn before it was popular), but the most memorable for me are the 4 from the wild hills!
