HAT TIPS
Hello,
When you have animals, you can expect things to go wrong occasionally. It usually happens when you are preparing to go to graduation, or maybe an anniversary party. Maybe you were planning on a romantic supper at The Crossing, and the phone will ring.
“Your cattle are in my corn field!”
“Your horses are on the highway!”
“Your dog is over to our house again!”
I imagine everyone that raises cattle has had one of their bulls go through, or over, the fence and get in with the neighbors registered cattle.
I have friends that raise horses. To raise horses, at some point you have to incorporate the use of a stallion. That is just the way that nature works. Most people do not like stallions. They are miserable creatures to be around. Most of them have only one job to do on this planet, and they are anxious to do it.
So you keep stallions pretty much under lock and key until their services are required. Then you have to be very careful when you handle them. Very, very careful.
Last week my friend’s stallion escaped. And he found a bunch of pretty Appaloosa mares down the road and over the fence. He thought that he had died and gone to horse heaven.
Now the owner of the Appys didn’t really care to have their years of selective breeding infused with the bloodlines of a Western Pleasure sire. So the phone call was made.
The problem arose because the stallion decided he would not be caught. And there was no corral available to lock him in. So the hunt was on. A roper in back of a side by side. Forty miles an hour over rock and cliff. Around and around they went. The stallion winning the race and being impossible to rope. He could have won the Triple Crown. After they pretty much had wrecked the side by side, they went to plan B.
Taking a lesson from Wild Kingdom, they built a blind. And after borrowing a dart gun and enough dope to bring down an elephant, they managed to herd the now wary stallion close to the blind. Bang! Bang! Bang! They tripled the dose to be sure the wild stallion would succumb to the tranquilizer. He did.
The stallion gave it up, was haltered, and led, wobbling a bit, down the road. The hunt was over.
There still may be just a little friction. Because the stallion owners suggested they should receive stud fees for the four App mares the stallion had bred!
Later,
Dean