Inspired by a recent story in this paper about rodeo cowboys and a second piece about the tragedy involving runaway horses in an Iowa parade, I am moved to tell the story of Blaze (aka Killer) pictured above.
Horses and I get along just fine as long as they are thirty-something and galloping is just a sweet memory of their youth. I was covering the Minnesota Grouse Dog Championship trial in the Rum River State Forest near Mora for American Field Magazine. Because there were fifty four dogs entered and each brace of dogs had an hour to show their stuff, this added up to four days and lots of walking. Twenty seven hours of walking.
No problem, said the trial organizers, we've got horses for you and the judges. My legs felt better already with this news. Day one went pretty well. Blaze fairly plodded along the narrow trails that had been laboriously cut through the thick woods by the local grouse dog club, ever passionate about their sport. He did have one bad habit that should have warned me about things to come. He hooked my legs on saplings bordering the trail. On purpose.
The second morning I was five minutes late for the start of the first brace. The dogs, handlers and judges had already departed the club house, driven out along a gravel road and were a couple hundred yards into the woods by the time I arrived. Blaze was saddled and waiting, impatiently, for me. The instant my cheeks hit the saddle Blaze morphed into Secretariat and the gravel road into Churchill Downs.
You know how they say your life flashes before you just before you die a violent death? Not me. Headlines flashed before my eyes. "Local Writer Dragged To His Death By Crazed Horse". "Autopsy Shows Klein Died of Blunt Force Trauma To His Head".
With my fingernails buried deep into the saddle horn, the reins pulled taut to the point of breaking and my vocal cords burning from screaming WHOA! Blaze blazed down that gravel road surely setting the new world record for the mile. And when he realized he wasn't going to find his stable mate Blackie there he made a high-speed 180 and reset the world record back to the horse trailer.
I quietly dismounted, made the decision to walk the rest of the braces and lined up to kick Blaze right in the you-know-whats. Fortunately for him he was a gelding.
