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This story involves both horses and cows.
When I was 17 I worked on the race track for a summer. Part of my duties was to either exercise, hot walk or just walk horses every morning. Well we were stabled at ATOKAD race track in South sioux City neb that summer and were racing at Park jefferson in Jefferson SD. Since there was no race meet at our track there were always some kind of fair or show going on.
On the day in question( a Sat) there was a dairy show there and in the barn next to ours was the yearling holstein heifer show. So I am making laps around the barn walking race horses 4 at a time, 2 on each side, and being young and hung over I had all 4 of then dallied to the saddlehorn so that I could walk them and doze at the same time.
As luck would have it someone let go of a yearling heifer and just as I came aroung that end of the barn here she came he[[ bent for leather out of the show barn bawling her brains out and coming straight at me. Since these were race horses they thought they were being attacked by a black and white alien and that's how the wreck started.
The two on the left came over the top of the pony horse and the two on the right took off for Iowa at the same time. The result was that the saddle and me with it ended up under the belly of the pony horse. The last thing I remember was 5 sets of hooves flying around my head and then the lights went out. I woke up about 30 minutes later laid out in the tack room with a concussion and a couple of broken ribs. I should have died that day, but just got lucky and ended up with a little more brain damage to go along with what I already had.
AHHHH the good old days.
 
Just out of college I worked for an Embryo transfer farm in Virginia. My job was to take care of the recips and keep the Donor cows in Show shape. We were using angus cows with calves on them for recips. We would wean the angus calves early and take them to the sale barn. We had to gather a group from one farm and take them to the headquarters. I had an Appaloosa mare named Poco that I brought there with me from Indiana. She had been trained as a cutting horse before I got her. The farm I worked on had a bunch of Thoroughbreds that were supposedly polo ponies. They thought my little mare was pretty funny, I guess. We were gathering the cows on horseback and running them into a big pole barn to be loaded up. A coworker was sitting on one of the Polo ponies and keeping the cows we had moved up from getting back out. One of the cows decided she wanted to go back, so she blew past that horse before he even picked up a hoof. I took off after her and tried to turn her back, but she made the gate and started running full out down a hillside. We tried to turn her repeatedly but she had no respect for the horse. We would come into her and she would bump us. Mind you we are going full out down this hill. I looked at my horse's ears and they were layed back flat on her head. The next time that cow came into us, my horse swung away and came back in, dipped her shoulder and layed that cow out. I remember looking down and seeing that cow go under us. Poco must have jumped her, because we made it clear. We pulled up down the hill and went back. That cow was just laying there breathing hard. I booted her a couple of times to get her up. No dice. I thought "Great, I just killed this cow." Then it occurred to me that she had come to rest with her back down hill. I grabbed a leg and flipped her over. She sprang up. I got back on Poco and that cow walked quietly, back up that hill and right into the barn with us behind her.

When that cow went down, I thought it was all over. Nobody made fun of my horse after that. :)
 
KMacGinley":3h261x6t said:
Just out of college I worked for an Embryo transfer farm in Virginia. My job was to take care of the recips and keep the Donor cows in Show shape. We were using angus cows with calves on them for recips. We would wean the angus calves early and take them to the sale barn. We had to gather a group from one farm and take them to the headquarters. I had an Appaloosa mare named Poco that I brought there with me from Indiana. She had been trained as a cutting horse before I got her. The farm I worked on had a bunch of Thoroughbreds that were supposedly polo ponies. They thought my little mare was pretty funny, I guess. We were gathering the cows on horseback and running them into a big pole barn to be loaded up. A coworker was sitting on one of the Polo ponies and keeping the cows we had moved up from getting back out. One of the cows decided she wanted to go back, so she blew past that horse before he even picked up a hoof. I took off after her and tried to turn her back, but she made the gate and started running full out down a hillside. We tried to turn her repeatedly but she had no respect for the horse. We would come into her and she would bump us. Mind you we are going full out down this hill. I looked at my horse's ears and they were layed back flat on her head. The next time that cow came into us, my horse swung away and came back in, dipped her shoulder and layed that cow out. I remember looking down and seeing that cow go under us. Poco must have jumped her, because we made it clear. We pulled up down the hill and went back. That cow was just laying there breathing hard. I booted her a couple of times to get her up. No dice. I thought "Great, I just killed this cow." Then it occurred to me that she had come to rest with her back down hill. I grabbed a leg and flipped her over. She sprang up. I got back on Poco and that cow walked quietly, back up that hill and right into the barn with us behind her.

When that cow went down, I thought it was all over. Nobody made fun of my horse after that. :)
Click to expand...

YES! I love those Appie's, Mac! I have had experiences with three in the past, and they are wonderful little Babies! You just have to "Hang ON!"

DOC HARRIS
 
Here's a horse story for ya, I got this job training show jumpers in Europe. After I'd been there a few months the owner called, said he wanted me to go pick a horse up at the vets place, and he would come over the next weekend to talk about him. He was a pretty famous champion show jumper who had damaged his foot badly on a jump. The vet had operated on him, cutting the nerves in his leg below the knee, ( a neurectomy ) which killed any pain and all of the feeling in the lower part of his front leg. So what the owner wanted was for him to jump again, he hated seeing his great horse go out on such a bad note, and asked me to spend as much time as I could to do that. There were two small problems, the horse had won so many points in his show career you could put a 4 year old kid on his back and still the smallest show he could compete in was class A, pretty big fences, the other problem was the leg which had no feeling in it, so it might would have a tendency to hang down some, not good when your jumping big fences. First thing I had to do was get him back in shape, as he'd been out of work for a good while. After a few weeks the owner came back around, said the horse looked good, time to start jumping him again. I said I'd already started, he's doing good, I think he'll be fine. "let's see how he's doing then" the owner said. So out we went to where the jumps were set up, and I took him over a few small fences, 3 1/2 foot stuff with a couple of jumps with a 3 1/2 to 4 ft spread. Then the owner said, " he's doing fine, but he's not really jumping, you've probably never ridden a horse this good before, you need to feel that kick he has when he jumps so you'll know what were looking for in a top jumper". So he walked over and made the biggest jump a little taller and wider and said take that at a slow trot, so I came around and popped over the fence, no big deal. "He's still not putting much effort in it, try from a walk, see if that helps". So I come on around at a walk thinking there's no way this horse is gonna jump that fence, of coarse he did, launched my somewhat unprepared butt through the air like I'd been shot out of a canon, I landed the other side of the fence before he did, all I could do was wait for him to land front feet first on top of me, this wasn't some light thoroughbred, it was a 18.2 hand warm blood, probably weighed more than a ton, so I lucked out, if he would have landed on my back, head or neck who knows what would have happened, all he did was stand/land on my hand, it didn't take but a few seconds for it to swell about twice it's normal size, I spent the next ten days or so looking like a cartoon character, a skinny little arm with big hand stuck on the end of it. I knew it wasn't much use getting checked out, because they wouldn't do anything till the swelling went down anyway, by the time that happened a lot of the pain had gone, so I never did get it checked out. Only time if gives me a problem now is if I let the hand get cold in the winter, then it feels like it's been smashed with a sledge hammer.
 

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