I sold my horse today. Not that I am much of a horseman.
Unlike many of my neighbours, I wasn’t raised on a ranch. I didn’t even learn to ride until I was almost 60. Still, selling Hotshot was difficult.
He was a terrific horse, respectful and intelligent. He taught me a lot about his way of looking at the world. He was the leader of his small herd of four horses and took his job seriously.
He demanded the respect of the other horses yet always deferred to me.
Horse ownership is a complex affair. The relationship between the animal and its owner is complicated. There are elements of dependence and trust, respect and authority, control and autonomy. Horses are herd animals; their training requires that they learn to defer to the owner/rider as the alpha member of the herd.
But once trained, they exhibit a loyalty that is moving in its dignity.
Some of the elements affecting my reaction to Hotshot’s sale are personal ones. My neighbours use horses as necessary tools in the operation of their cattle ranches.
They use them as a form of competitive recreation as well, taking part in barrel racing and penning competitions at rodeos and fairs.
I wanted Hotshot for trail riding and, because, well, I grew up watching cowboy movies. I’m old enough to have been raised on Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger.
I even remember Tom Mix. I idolized them all and for years only wanted the newest, fanciest cap guns and holsters for my birthday.
When my mother made me a western shirt with the inverted L-shaped button pattern like the Range Rider, I wore it every day that it wasn’t in the wash.
The cowboys in those days were mythic figures. Sam Pekinpah and Clint Eastwood hadn’t yet reduced them to just another kind of unsavoury, complex anti-hero. In the Fifties, the white-hatted cowboys were brave and honourable and never failed to fight for justice.
They were tough as well and always rode their faithful horses at breakneck speed. It didn’t matter what the terrain was, flat plains, rocky hillsides, steep arroyos, they flew over the ground. Who wouldn’t want to be a cowboy?
So late in life I briefly became one. Not a real one, of course, like my neighbours are, but perhaps about as close to one as my childhood heroes actually were. I got to ride a horse, wear the hat and boots and Western shirt, and ride across fields and up and down rocky trails, albeit not at breakneck speed.
Some of the dreams we have as children we are able to fulfill, some we are not, but one by one we end up letting all of them go.
Hi yo, Silver! Away!
– Jim Holtz is WEEKENDER columnist and former reporter for the Grand Forks Gazette