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 OFFLINE | Pistol was the horse that taught me to pay close attention to what their owners were saying but to let the horse tell me what was really going on. One day I got a call from a gentleman that had a 6 yr. old appendix quarter horse that had never been started under saddle and he wanted him started. We made arrangements for me to come take a look and pick the horse up. When I got there the man took me into a dark barn to introduce me to the horse. He was explaining to me how the horse was nuts and how when I took him out of the stall he was going to try and run over me. I had carried a 30ft. lunge line with me, so I went into the stall to get the horse. It took me about 20 minutes to get the horse to come out of the stall and sure enough when he came out he came out getting it and tried to knock me down and when the horse hit the end of the line, I couldn't turn him so I turned him loose. The man ask me why I let him go and I explained to him I didn't need my arms to be any longer and I preferred my shoulders stay in their socket.
While we were walking out to where the horse was, the man explained to me how they always took a whip and would beat the horses legs to make him stay back. I then realized why it took me so long to get the horse out of the stall. He also told me how the horse had gotten cast under a fence as a yearling and when he went to help him get out, he had bitten the man so he took a 2x4 and beat him. They then separated him from the other horses and he had been kept this way for 5 yrs. That explained why he had no social skills.
I walked out into a paddock area where the horse was loose and he was running around enjoying being free. He went to run back by me dragging the lunge line and this time I was able to grab it and turn him. The man had a round pen so I put him in the round pen and went in and worked him for maybe 20 minutes and was able to get him to start paying attention and focusing some.
I then, got ready to load him on the horse trailer for the first time in his life. The owner was figuring I was going to be there a while so he decided to go in the house. Five minutes later I walked in asked him to sign the training contract, pay me and I would be on my way. I got Pistol home, put him in a stall and left to run do some errands. When I got back I discovered Pistol was a "SELF SAVAGER". He would reach around and smell himself and then grab his own flank and pull a chunk of meat out. Self-savagers are rare and it was the first time I had ever seen it.
I called the owner that evening and he explained to me that he had done it before but he thought the behavior was gone because he hadn't seen it in a while. I preceded on with the horse and within about 3 days he was under saddle and things were going well. One of the things that did bother me as I was doing round pen work with Pistol, was that I felt like he didn't know the difference between he and I. He would smell me and get ready to breed. No doubt he was smelling the other horses on me.
It was getting close to the end of the month and he was riding beautifully. I was in the round pen riding him one day and a couple of clients were there. I had forgotten that I had a mare turned out in the pasture and she could come up to the backside of the round pen. The mare came up and the stud started going bananas. He started popping up and getting light in the front and lost all of his focus. I stepped off of him with the reins in my hands and started scolding him by backing him up. He got to the end of the reins and the next thing I knew he had his ears pinned and come after me full bore. He went after my throat but I managed to knock him off to my shoulder. I still carry that scar. He picked me up in the air above his head and was shaking me like a rag doll, and I'm not a small man. He then dropped me to the ground and immediately started stomping on me. I realized that if I rolled away from him he would follow me, so I decided to roll underneath him. To my surprise he dropped down on top of me and started bearing all of his weight on me and tried to wallow me into the ground. I guess he thought he had gotten the job done, because he got up and went to the far side of the round pen. I got up and was bent over with my hands on my knees inspecting the damage to my shoulder and catching my breath. Saying a little prayer of thanks for still being alive.
I had taken a glance at him and saw him standing all the way across the round pen. I'm still looking at my shoulder but the next thing I hear is the clients outside the round pen say "he's coming back!" I watched Pistol drop his nose to the ground and drag it all the way across the round pen to me. When he got there I had straightened up as he raised his head to my midsection and put his head basically in my lap. I stroked his face and let him know that I understood. Later I was asked what that had meant and I explained that he came over to apologize. Pistol then walked away and left.
I went to the hospital to have my shoulder taken care of. It was the first time they had seen a horse bite that serious. There was a long line of hospital staff coming in to see the bite. I tried to get them to charge admission to help off-set the cost of the visit, but they wouldn't go for it.
That evening I called the owner and I asked him to come to the barn the next day. I showed him the bite and explained to him, he needed to have the horse gelded. He said, "God gave him those" and I explained he also gave vets really good sharp knives. He accused me of using the horse for breeding. That made me pretty hot so I reached over and opened my stud's stall door and called him out into the breezeway. I explained to him that I owned this stud and I wouldn't waste a bad mare's year breeding her to his stud. I then let him know that he had created this monster and that he was going to own him for the rest of his life and that the only option he had left was to pick the horse up. He picked the horse up and for about two years I didn't hear a peep about Pistol.
One night the phone rang and a young man identified himself as a part time trainer and that he wanted to talk to me about a horse named Pistol. I told him, "what ever you do, don't pull on his head". He said it was too late, the horse had put him in the hospital twice in one day. He related that he knew I had worked with the horse, so he figured he was going to have a pretty easy job working with him. He had asked the man about me and the horse and the man wouldn't tell him anything. He said, the riding had been great, "he had never rode a horse that rode as well as Pistol did. He said he had even let his kids ride this horse and he told me he had gone off trail riding with some people. When he told me that, I figured the horse was no longer a stud and sure enough he had been gelded.
He related how they had gone trail riding and come up on some water and he couldn't get the Pistol into the water. When he said he had gotten off and waded out into the water, I asked him to repeat that. Once again he said he had gotten off and waded out in the water to get the horse to come in the water. I explained to him that "it would never make sense to me to get off of a perfectly good horse to get my feet wet".
Anyway he did and he pulled on the horse and he came forward, and he pulled on him again and he came forward and the third time he pulled on him the horse jumped on him and grabbed him by the back of the shoulder and lifted him in the air and shook him. He aborted the trail ride, took the horse home, put him in the round pen with a steel muzzle on and took off to the hospital to have his bite taken care of.
He come later that evening and went to place the horse back in a stall. As he was leading him back to the stall the horse stopped and he pulled on him, the horse came forward but then stopped again. He pulled on him again and this time Pistol jumped on him again. A steel muzzle can do a lot of damage. He ended up spending the night in the hospital that evening with a concussion and six stitches over his eye. He asked me if I could fix Pistol and I explained to him that I could but that it was dangerous for him and the horse, and that he was going to have to trust me more than he had ever trusted anyone in his life. He tried to get the owner to give him the horse but to no avail.
In later conversations with the young man I discovered that the horse had taken something away from him and now he was scared to go back in the pen with any horses he didn't know. I explained to him that agressive horses are normally man made, though breeding can play a part in it, and that it will be a man that takes the aggression away from him. He was eventually able to continue on and go back to training again.
As it ended up the owner wouldn't relinquish Pistol to him. I asked him to reiterate to the owner that "he owned Pistol for the rest of his life."
It's been around 20 years passed and I'm pretty sure that Pistol has left this world for a better place where no one is beating him on the legs. |
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Pistol
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