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The Little Horse That Could

Kip is born to run. His sire is a World Champion. His dam is a track record holder. His older brother has yet to be defeated, winning against the toughest of competition. Even his sister looks like she is going to be able to smoke the best of them.

His proud owners are there, stroking his mother's neck, talking softly to her, as she lays prone in the deep straw of the foaling stall. One final push and he enters his new world, his coat wet and slippery from his mother's womb. Ears flattened backwards from the passage of birth, a quick shake of his head and they spring uprights. His nostrils distend to draw in this newest, filling his lungs with life. His big brown eyes are already attempting to focus on his surroundings. His owners smile and hug each other. A quick check tells them it is a colt, he too will be a champion.

Kip is a pretty dark Bay color. A single white star adorning his forehead. He is a good looking colt, handsome to watch as he races around his mother, playing endless tag with his own shadow. Everything fascinates him, the people, even the old Border Collie, who touches noses with him, before turning to go lie in the shade of the barn. The people scratch his itchy spots and tell him that he is going to be a champion. But first, he must grow.

Because Kip is away to small. His proud owners had known that he was a small colt, twenty minutes after his birth. In twenty minutes he had already struggled to his feet, wobbling like a drunken sailor, but determined to stand. Then, it had hit them square on. This was a ridiculously small colt. Why, his brother and sister had been actually bigger than normal when they were born? Why on earth, was this one so small? He certainly had some growing to do.

But Kip couldn't grow; it just wasn't going to happen. By the start of his second year, he was a beauty to behold. Tossing his forelock, he pranced, showing the whole world what a handsome gelding he was. But the other young race horses in training towered over him. His owners still fussed over him, but their worried eyes were shadowed in doubt about Kip becoming a champion.

He ran his heart out. A streak of determined fire. But he could not win. His stride no match for the others with their longer limbs. After each valiant effort, he nuzzled his people, trying to tell them that he was doing his best. But the other trainers and racehorse owners at the track began to laugh at him. They called him a runt, a Shetland pony with a jockey on top. They told his people, to take their pony home and to come back with a real racehorse. And his people hung their heads in shame. It was plain; Kip couldn't be a champion for them.

The other ranch hands laughed at Pete when he came home with the little bay gelding from the sale. They teased him about what good he would be for a ranch horse? What was he going to rope off the little horse? Jack rabbits? Maybe a coyote providing it was only half grown? Because if you roped anything bigger than that, say a yearling steer needing to be doctored, the silly little horse wasn't big enough to stop it and hold onto it?

Pete just smiled. He had gotten Kip dirt-cheap. For the price of him, surely he would be good at something. He would show the rest of the boys, he actually sort of liked the handsome bay.

Kip took his new life in stride. Certainly this living in a dusty corral was different than the luxury of the big barns he was used to. But the hay and oats were the same. Certainly this heavy saddle and big man, who swung up on him, seemed a lot more weight to carry than he was used to. But he never complained, just tossed his nose in the air and pranced a bit when leaving the corral.

Now cows were a different story. He snorted and blew, his eyes rolled back, these were animals he had never seen. He liked the dogs, the cats, and even the chickens busy scratching in the dirt of the rancher's yard. Why back when he was younger, he had even taken a liking to the pet donkey and the pet goat that lived mostly in the aisle way of the barn he grew up in.

This man on his back kept trying to force him closer and closer to these lumbering beasts. Shaking, he wanted to do as he was told, but fear was growing in him by leaps and bounds. Then all hell broke loose. One of the beasts dropped its head, a terrible bellow came from its throat and it stepped towards Kip, shaking its head. Kip went straight sideways, quicker than chained lightening. His fear stricken leap was so sudden and violent, that Pete was taken totally by surprise and he bit the dust. No cowboy likes to land in the dirt, especially in front of his friends. Sure enough, the other boys were threatening to fall out of their saddles themselves, with their laughing so hard. Angrily he swore at them, demanding they ride after the fleeing horse and bring him back. Finally Harry agreed, but only because Pete was the type who didn't like being teased for very long. Pete could get testy about something's pretty quickly.

As soon as Kip had put enough distance between himself and the monster cows, he slowed to a stop, turning to stare back, eyes wide. Harry loped up to him, reached over and grabbed the reins, Kip led obediently beside him, ashamed of what he had done. When they arrived back at where Pete stood waiting, thankfully the cows had moved off in the distance. He tried to rub his head on Pete's shoulder to say he was sorry, but the cowboy pushed him away.

Pete hadn't been cowboying as long as some of the others, but he was a fair to middling hand around cattle and horses. He just had never actually run into a horse before who was so bloody scared of cows. Oh, the odd colt would snort and blow when first introduced to them, but Kip was just plain ridiculous. The bay gelding shook and shivered like he was in a 45 below blizzard just coming near one.
Pete tried to take it easy on the bay, but he was fast loosing his temper. He could tell that the horse was truly trying to please him, but about the fourth time he got in a wreck, he lost it.

The first time had been bad enough. The second time, the bay had spun in a frantic circle, then bolted for home. Using every trick in the book he finally got the little gelding stopped. The rest of the men had cackled and snickered. The third time, he had finally been able to get the horse right into the middle of a herd of quiet old cows, intent on grazing the lush summer pasture, who seemed to pose no threat to the bay. Until one of them, a dominant Angus cross cow, chose that very second to bunt the cow next to her. Just a kind of get out of my way bunt to the belly. The other cow was forced to step quickly sideways, sideways towards Kip. The bay horse, shied away, Pete sank his off side spur into his ribs to smarten him up. As far as Kip was concerned, some cow on that side of him must have reached over and bit him hard. He spun and headed for home. Again Pete regained control of the frightened horse, and again the other amused cowboys chuckled and poked fun at him.
The fourth time, Pete met up with the hard ground and lost all respect for his handsome little horse. One second Kip had been fairly quiet while they moved some cows to new pasture. Until a startled jack rabbit exploded from his hiding spot, between Kip and a cow. Kip was sure the ornery cow had produced the jackrabbit and leapt so explosively sideways, that Pete was thrown and thrown hard.

Nothing was the same after that. Pete rode him long and hard. From sunup to sundown. Often with little feed, no more currying the sweat from his itchy back after a long ride. No more stopping at a water hole for a drink on a hot, dusty day. The little horse found the weight of the heavy man and saddle agony to carry, day after day.

But somehow he still managed to nicker a greeting to Pete each and every morning. He tried and then he tried some more. But he couldn't get over his fear of cows. But as his ribs began to show, and his weary legs grew numb, he didn't have the strength to shy away any longer. Or to bolt for home. But he still shivered just being near them. Disgusted, Pete hauled the once proud gelding to the local horse sale.

The little horse walked out of the back of the borrowed horse trailer and led quietly behind his new owner. The man led him through a rickety gate, and turned him loose in the small pasture. He dragged over a garden hose and filled a rusty metal trough with water.

He thought that the quiet bay gelding was going to be perfect for him. He wasn't very big but then he had paid only a few dollars for him too. But he was a cowboy's horse, and so he could brag about buying a real ranch horse. When he was a boy, he had always wanted to be a cowboy and ride a real cowhorse. Now, finally he owned a horse, a real honest to goodness horse. Imagine that.

At first, Kip had lots of tall grass to eat. He even began to gain some of his lost weight back. Sometimes the man was a day or so late, filling his water trough when it became empty, but Kip was happy. But all to soon, the best grass was gone. So Kip ate the weeds, he didn't like them, but he was hungry now. The man still never bothered to ride him, in fact he seemed to have lost interest in him completely. Kip thought that maybe, the man had full filled his childhood dream of owning a horse and that was good enough.

Kip's head hung down. He waited patiently at the empty water trough. How many days had it been, since the man had bothered to fill it? Kip's sunken eyes searched the ground, hoping to spot a single blade of food he may have missed. Only dust and stone remained.
Sighing, he tried to ignore his hunger, surely the man would come today. He couldn't last much longer, he just couldn't.

Up on the hill, Sarah raised her birthday present to her eyes. The binoculars had opened up a whole new world for her. Searching below, she sighted the brown horse in the dust bowl of a pasture he lived in. She gasped, tears beginning to smear her vision. The poor horse still didn't even have water. Hearing her mother's soft footsteps behind her, she choked out the words she had been saying for weeks. "Mother, you have to do something." "You have to get Dad to do something." "You must." Stroking her daughters hair, she answered, "These things are complicated, Sarah, your father and I know how much you love horses, but we really can't get involved." "Now let's go into the house, and you can help me make lasagna for your fathers supper." Silently, Sarah turned away from the sight of starvation below. After supper she would plead once again with her father. Maybe this time he would listen, before it was to late.

Wouldn't you know it, of all days for her father to be late for supper, when she needed so desperately to talk to him? And then she looked up, her gaze travelling to the front window. Sarah came very close to fainting. Because there was her father, slowly walking up the driveway, and stumbling behind him was the rack of bones from the pasture below the hill. He had listened to her after all. He had done something. He had saved the horse.

And Kip could do it. He could gently take each wisp of newly bought hay from Sarah's hands without pinching a single one of her fingers. He could stand perfectly still as she brushed the dirt from his sides. He could drink from the bucket she held for him, without spilling it on her, though Sarah would only have laughed if he did.

And Kips beautiful bay coat could glisten in the sun once again. He could nicker a greeting to her each and every time she appeared at his new corral with his very own one horse barn attached to it.

And there would come the day, when her father could lift her out of her wheel chair and gently sit her up on the back of the little horse. Kip was patient and careful with his precious mistress. All because Kip could love and be loved again. Forever.

END