All About Barb

Last time I wrote, I exhibited a short list of things that were on my roster to write about. I covered the news on the gargantuan water tank, and now I’d like to say a thing or two about Barb. And by “a thing or two,” what I really mean is that I'm going to go on about this for approximately twenty pages of size fourteen font. I will surely get feedback on the unseemly length of this article again, but I will brave the calumny in exchange for not having to figure out where to splice on a whole extra intro and outro. Anyway, let's get on with it.

I believe I’ve said a thing or two about Barb before. She’s a pretty little bay mare that we’ve had for a few years now, but the jury’s still out on whether she’s a good one or a bad one. She used to be more bad than good, and Dad and I kind of flip-flopped on who had to ride her. She was never really bad, but tended to make a ride not enjoyable with some persistent nonsense. Now it seems that she has cut out that mid-range non-enjoyable stuff and has chosen to live on both ends of the spectrum. Her good qualities have gotten gooder, and her bad stuff got badder. Fortunately (and this is why she’s still here), she is mostly a gooder horse. She’s pretty much dependable to jump on and go to work any time. She handles a rope great, even under duress, and definitely shows grit when having to hold animals that are bigger than her. She’s taken a pretty good hit from a bull, and still shows no fear of cattle, and can spin and run to cut a cow like no one’s business. No doubt about it, she’s become a pretty fun horse to ranch on. Unfortunately, with Barb, one can go from really appreciating the horsepower underneath them, to really not appreciating the horsepower that just vacated the spot underneath them, in a very short span.

Concerning the good and the bad Barb, I will now go into excessive detail...

This year I helped out with pulling bulls and round-up in the community pasture here, and I used Barb the whole time.

Barb had been a stellar mount all throughout calving season. She tracks right up to calves so that I can drop a rope on if they’re running, even if they run beneath her; she stands her ground when the cows chase, even if they hit her; and she hardly ever loses a cow that we have to keep away from Dad. In fact, I can only think of two black marks on her record for the whole spring and summer.

The first one was not painful, but Barb did act rather rudely. It was one of the rare muddy days that we had last summer, and I had dismounted to open a gate for Dad and myself. This was an electric gate with two wires. The bottom wire has a simple handle with a hook that gets attached to a loop, but the top wire has to be wrapped around the post and tied. In other words, I needed two hands for it. Since the ground was muddy, I left my reins up on Barb’s neck, instead of dropping one to the ground to ground-tie her. Once I was holding the gate open, and after Dad rode his horse through, I clucked a bit to Barb. My thought was that she would want to go stand with her horsey pal anyway, so I was just giving her a nudge of encouragement. I planned for her to go stand by Dad until I got the gate closed behind them.

Well, Barb did go through. Unfortunately, my few clucks of encouragement were not just giving her permission to follow her buddy; I was, apparently, telling her to go ahead without me and wait for me at the trailer, which was another half mile away. When Barb went through the gate, she didn’t even hesitate; just put her head down and started walking down the trail to the trailer. We yelled at her a couple times, but she just kept walking.

It was when Dad tried to trot up to her with his horse, Mexico, that started her speeding up. He tried to get up beside her, first at a trot, then quickly building speed. Mexico is a horse that has been easily outstripped in a flat race with an overweight cow, so he never really stood a chance. Not only was she faster, but also smart enough to stay just out of Dad’s reach.

I watched my father and our two horses disappear over the hill, then turned and closed the gate before starting my walk of shame.

About halfway back, the trio was running back over the hills towards me. Dad had managed to get around Barb, close the gate that led to the trailer, then head her off and chase her back down the trail towards me. Barb is not a moron. She came to me and stopped, and we continued on our way. At least my reins hadn’t gotten muddy.

Barb’s second infraction was a lot worse in terms of physical painfulness for myself. We had to move the yearling heifers across a road into another pasture. It was a pretty simple thing; the heifers were easy to handle, and it wasn’t a long move. Since it was going to be a short jaunt, and it worked out to be on a weekend, we had along Sister, Sister-in-Law, Brother, and Oldest Nephew, all on horses too. As we rode up on the paddock the heifers were in, we saw that some were way out on the far end of a long slough, and some were out grazing nearer to where we were riding. Since Barb is the fastest horse we have, not to mention the one we don’t mind putting to work due to years of built-up spite, she and I were sent for the long run.

If it had just been a matter of gathering up my appointed heifers and bringing them to a muster point, I would not have been in such a hurry. However, the heifers that Dad and Co. would be bringing would naturally want to funnel into the wrong side of the slough, too. So I had to get mine up and out in time to block the rest of the herd from going there. You might think, “Oh, well, surely your dad could kind of hold up on pushing his heifers until you’re in place?” But this is the man that drives the tractor in C-4 towards the gate you have to get, just to see if you can get there fast enough.

Anyway, off we went, Barb and I, at a brisk jog.

I hadn’t gotten half-way there when I already heard Dad shouting commands at his dog. Now my task was to out run heifers that were trying to out run a dog.

I was approaching a hill, so I nudged Barb to take a run at it. Now, you aren’t supposed to run up and down hills with horses. If you’ve ever allowed your legs to carry you full speed down a hill, you probably can imagine why you wouldn’t want to do that on top of a 1000-pound four-legged animal. When I was a teen, I was riding a horse down a hill at a light jog when the horse tripped and went down. He managed to keep his hind legs under himself, but dragged his shoulders. He ended up pulling one shoulder bad enough that he had to be loaded out in the pasture. He eventually healed up, but I won’t forget the sensation of sliding down a hill on a horse, hoping I don’t get rolled over. What doesn’t kill me doesn’t necessarily make me stronger, but it does build on my perpetually growing index of worst-case scenarios to play out in my noggin, free of charge.

Anyway, that’s why you take your time down a hill. Uphill is less dangerous, and the main reason for not letting a horse run up hills is that they want to do just that. If you let them run every time, what you end up with is a horse that will be conditioned to bolt up any hill they come to. It might not seem so bad, until you have to stop them someday, and they can’t wrap their head around that. That’s the main reason for teaching them to walk, but I discovered another reason to walk up hills: because you can’t see what’s on the other side.

I had nudged Barb into a lope to get up the hill. Halfway up the sharp hill, I thought, “I’m pretty sure there’s a brush pile on the other side of this... but Barb doesn’t spook that hard; I’ll ride it out.”

But I forgot a fundamental aspect of Barb’s nature: if, by spooking, she can get herself closer to her friends, the trailer, or home, she will spook at anything, and if crocodiles on fire with plastic bags on their tails stood between her and those things, she would calmly walk through them.

Anyway, we crested the hill together, but being on top of her, at least for the moment, I saw a second sooner than she that there was indeed a gnarly brush pile. I prepared myself for the spook, but was clearly unprepared for the magnitude. Barb stopped and wheeled about a 200-degree spin instantaneously. I did neither of those things, but pretty much lingered in the air around the spot where she had been a moment ago. Somehow, I was conscious of rapidly changing my plan from ‘riding it out’ to ‘hang on’ (that one was the shortest lived) to ‘keep hold of the reins because she’ll leave me’ to ‘oh crap let go of that one rein or I’ll pull her around and she’ll step on me’.

That last plan finally stuck, but you might notice it didn’t leave much room for planning a landing. I sure noticed that when I hit the ground on my back and the wind left my sails. I know in my head that Barb is just an animal and was just acting on her animal instincts towards self preservation. But in my heart, it sure felt personal.

The names that I called Barb were not new ones, but I was disappointed to hear that they lacked the vim and verve that I felt because I had spent some of my last bits of adrenaline and oxygen on getting up quickly.

I looked around, but didn’t see any of my crew. I was mostly glad that no one had seen my fall, but a little bit miffed that I was not going to get any support in calling Barb names, nor any pity for myself. And since no one had seen my spill, I was obviously still expected outrun the heifers that the dog was bringing my way.

If you’ve ever been winded, you know your breath comes back in little inadequate puffs of air. It was with these that I managed to lift my leg into a stirrup and clumsily heave myself back onto that pernicious bay mare.

We walked down the hill as my lungs recovered, and when we reached flatter, more open terrain, I made Barb pick up a lope. I made her lope because we were on a time crunch, but I nudged her up to a faster lope because I was not feeling very charitable towards her.

We made it there in time, and though I suffered the sore muscles that accompany any sort of jarring activity at my age, I didn’t think too much of the incident. It was the first time I had fallen off of Barb, so I surely wouldn’t be due for another fall for quite some time...

Now let’s get back on track with the stories from the co-op pasture.

We started out with pulling bulls in August. It was brutally hot for most of the days we were getting bulls, so we would meet at the corral with the pasture manager at around 7 am and try to be out of there before noon so we weren’t working in the heat too much.

On one of the days, we were after three Simmental bulls. The herd they were with typically hangs out on a particular end of the pasture, so we split up and rode through, hoping to get the herd, along with the three bulls, gathered up into a corner. We managed to get two bulls gathered up this way, but this particular herd was inclined to divide and conquer. They would mill around a bit, then split out in different directions to get away. Dad and I had a heck of a time trying to keep them all pinned near the corner while Manager got the trailer set up along a fence. Once Manager got set up and on his horse, he and Dad were able to run the bigger, slower bull onto the trailer rather easily. I was given the impossible task of keeping the herd there while that was underway, and as with many impossible tasks, I did not succeed. Fortunately, they were pretty prompt about getting the bull loaded, so I was able to at least keep the other bull and some of the less cantankerous cows gathered nearby.

The bull that remained was a yearling, less intimidating both in size and in potential commitment to delinquent behaviour of the aggressive variety, but far more light on his feet. He was difficult to keep up to with the horses, but impossible to keep up with when he planted and turned, or just squeezed between the horses. Manager ended up throwing a rope on him, then we tied him down, backed the trailer to him, put some panels around him, and loaded him up. Manager took the two bulls back to the corrals and Dad and I split up again to look for the third bull.

After about 45 minutes of riding in strategic zig-zags, I happened upon a small group of cows with the bull in their midst. I looked around for some sort of landmark to describe my location. Nothing. I was in a sort of a bowl in regards to the general topography, and there were no nearby hills I could get to to hail another rider. I suspected that my strategic zig-zagging had unstrategically placed me farther east than I’d intended it to, but didn’t know exactly how much. I was not lost, per say, but I didn’t know just exactly where I was. Looking back, it is safer to say that I didn’t even know approximately where I was. That’s different than being lost, though, because I still knew what direction I had to ride to get to somewhere familiar. Also, being lost comes with a weighty feeling of panic. If you know, you know.

Anyway, I got on the radio to tell Dad that I’d found the bull.

“Where?” Dad asked.

“Weeellll...” I started, “I don’t know how to describe it. I zig-zagged a bunch, so I don’t think I’m all that far from the east fenceline... I’d have to ride out a ways to figure out exactly where I am.”

To avoid the extra riding, what we did instead was a game of Marco-Pollo. Dad shouted, and I went on the radio to tell him where he was in relation to me. Apparently, I was supposed to actually shout back to him, so he could hear where I was, too. I do know how Marco-Pollo works, I just thought the reciprocated call might spook the little herd of cows away. Dad could have also gone on the radio and told me to shout back, but he likes to do this thing where he doesn't use the radio, he just tells you in person what you should have done five minutes ago. This will be very effective once time machines are invented; he is just ahead of his time.

Anyway, the plan eventually worked, and Dad found his way to me, though he did some zig-zags of his own on the way.

When Dad arrived, we decided to try our luck at moving the bull out alone. Taking the little herd of cows along with him would be counter productive, as they were more of the scattering variety.

As soon as we approached the bull, it was pretty clear that he wasn’t really afraid of us. However, he acquiesced to our suggestion of moving, and even kind of went in the direction we wanted him to. He set the pace at a brisk extended trot and occasional lope, and after ping-ponging him between us a few times to keep him out of bushes, we got all the way to the main road into the pasture. If he would just crest one more hill, he would discover a herd of amiable Charolais cows resting at the dugout. These cows liked to hang out at the corral, too, and we hoped to move this whole herd in, taking the bull with them.

I think Dad and I were both mentally counting our chickens, which made it harder to accept the rapid crumbling of our plans. The bull refused to crest that last hill. In fact, he decided he had had enough of playing along with us, and was going to be heading back to where we found him. I tried to get in front to turn him back towards the dugout, and he put his head down, snorted, and ran at me; however, he was content to just push past me without hitting. Since he hadn’t hit me, I formed the assumption that he was just bluffing, and that if I came at a stronger angle, at a decent clip, Barb and I could win the game of chicken that we were engaging in. So off we went, Barb and I. We swung wide, then darted in nearly perpendicular to the bull, coming at his eye. Barb did not waver, God bless her, and when that bull put his head down and swung it against her shoulder, she kept her feet beneath her, and herself beneath me as we continued in the direction that the bull had assisted us with choosing.

Two excellent blessings were bestowed upon me in that moment: the first was that, though the bull had managed to fling his head against Barb in such a way as to put a 30-degree bend on the once-flat brass plate that secured my cinch, my knee, which typically rests nearly on top of this plate, was untouched. The second blessing was that the bull decided to stop after one hit and let us go.

With this new development, Dad and I were a lot more cautious about calling the bull’s bluffs. But we weren’t ready to give up yet. An easy victory had eluded us, but we had been so close that the taste of it was still there, taunting us.

We both went wide and came together in front of the bull. Being tired, and perhaps unsure which one of us he would most like to bruise, he stopped short of us and quivered there, head jerking to and fro as he questioned who the bigger threat was.

“Is your saddle tight?” Dad asked.

“Not really... do I want it to be tight? That’s a big bull, what am I going to do with him on the end of a rope??”

“Well we can’t get him like this.”

“Well... keep an eye on him for me.”

And so, against my better judgement, I jumped off and tightened my saddle. In my opinion, that was a dumb enough thing to do right in front of the bull that just roughed up my horse, but putting a rope on that 2000-pound bull and expecting my 1000-pound horse to hold him was even dumber.

I swung back on and pulled out my rope, making a nice big loop. Dad and I moved a little closer to the bull together, hoping we could keep him in his state of indecision long enough for me to get a shot. Well, dad was probably hoping that. I was hoping that I would not get a shot, or that I would miss the shot and we would give up and get the tranquilizer gun. That’s right, Manager has a tranquilizer gun, and we’re out there going from dumb to dumber because we couldn’t stand the bitter taste of defeat.

Anyway, since the only practice roping I’ve done has been alone with inanimate objects, my specialty, if I have one at all, is taking long shots on things way out in front of me. My large loop swung in a graceful arch and landed just perfectly over the bull’s ears. Since we faced each other, I couldn’t just pull tight, as the rope would pull off; I had to circle around and pull from beside or behind the bull.

Master planner Dad directed me in the next steps of our intricate dance with the bull.

“Okay, you slowly walk this way, and I’ll walk that way, and hopefully he’ll keep watching us...”

Very calmly, we began this manoeuvre.

Sometimes when dad’s shooting gophers, he’ll sit and wait for two to get lined up so he can get two with one shot. Maybe that’s what this bull was doing.

About the time Dad and I were crossing, the bull made his move. Obviously I was closest, as Dad couldn’t walk through the rope that was between me and the bull, so it’s to be expected that I was again targeted. I urged Barb into a faster gait, gave the rope a little pull as the bull charged past, just missing Barb’s rump, then threw the remaining coils well away from us.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I sure can throw away a rope.

The bull charged onward and away from us, now trailing my rope, and attached to the rope that was firmly fixed upon the bull was our commitment to finishing this job, if not for pride’s sake, then at least for the sake of my good lariat.

We got on the radio with Manager and let him know that the bull was heading back to where we’d found him, and that he could start heading south with the trailer and we’d meet him up there somewhere.

The bull kept diving into any bush that was in his path. Sometimes he’d stop in the middle, but mostly he just charged on through. We weren’t going back exactly the way we’d come, so neither Dad nor I had a great idea of our location, only that we were losing all of our ground very quickly. Dad kept tailing the bull as he went through the bushes, both to make sure he kept going , and to be ready for an opportunity to jump off, grab the rope, and wrap it around a tree. He shouted instructions at me as we went.

“Try to get him more east!”

“See if he'll stop on the edge of this bush and I’ll grab the rope.”

“Don’t let him push so much south!”

Dad may have missed the memo about the bull being a psycho, but I sure didn’t forget. Any time I attempted to obey my father, the bull just had to put his head down and give me a snorty little head toss, and I kept poor Barb (and my poor self) out of harm’s way.

Finally, the bull ran into a bush that had some cows next to it, to the east, on a hill. Dad saw the cows and shouted at me to turn the bull up the hill towards the cows.

Being on the outside of the bush, I was able to see that there was also a pocket of cows to the south, which is where the bull wanted to head anyway. In fact, it was the very same pocket of cows that we had originally picked the bull up in, so I was reasonably certain he was going to get to them no matter what actions I took. I relayed this information to Dad, but I suspect he didn’t hear me, because he just kept shouting about how I had to turn the bull east. Since chasing the bull obviously had no effect, I tried to bait the massive meathead into chasing me in the direction of the eastern cows. It worked only slightly better, which is still ineffective, and after taking a quick eastbound charge at me, he continued on his southern route.

Dad had witnessed some of my weak attempt and was acting (as well as articulating) as though, if I had done something smarter, I could have changed the bull’s aggressive behaviour and gotten him to walk demurely to the east cows. I countered this argument mostly with my best glare (it’s a pretty good one, due to lots of practice), then pointed out that there were just as many cows straight ahead, that it was where we had found the bull anyway, that it was the same distance to them as the other group of cows, and that I didn’t quite understand how he was still under the delusion that we were directing where the bull went.

Dad looked ahead to where the bull had stopped amongst the cows.

“Oh,” he said.

We stood back and kept an eye on the bull while we waited for Manager. When Manager arrived, we came up with the plan of moving the whole herd up towards the corrals. As soon as we put some pressure on the herd, the plan very quickly dissolved. The cows scattered and ran off while the bull darted into a bush and hid there. We regrouped at the bush the bull was in and it became the unspoken plan B that we would continue pursuing the bull through bushes until someone could grab my rope or Manager could get another rope on him. After only a couple of bushes, the bull stopped at the edge of the trees and stared down his pursuers, once again deciding who to chase. I came late to the party, having circled around the bush, so I didn’t see quite how things had gone down, but Manager’s rope was strung out in the bush, and he had somehow got a hold of the tail end of mine and was coiling it some as he rode closer to the bull. The bull ‘sploded out of there after him. Unlike myself, Manager managed to get the rope tightened and keep hold of it, simultaneously yelling at his horse that he’d better get moving, looking over his shoulder to keep tabs on the bull that was lifting his horse’s hind end, and getting ready to dally. When the bull felt that he’d harassed the horse enough for another break-away, he charged off. Manager was ready; he turned his big dun gelding to face the bull, and dallied. It was a hard brace, but the big horse held the even bigger bull. Dad ran up to the other side of the bull, and managed to get another rope around his neck. The two of them were able to keep the bull between each other. Once I had Manager’s rope picked up and coiled, I went and caught one back leg. When we had him stretched out properly, Manager jumped off and tied the bull’s front feet together, then put his back legs both into my loop for me to keep him stretched. Then Dad and I stayed with the bull while he rode back for his trailer.

We got the panels secured around the bull and a neck rope pulled snugly through the trailer before we let him up. He seemed to figure that the trailer had to be better than all the exercise he’d gotten in the last hour, so he jumped in fairly quickly.

We called it a day after that. Manager called the owner of the bulls and had him pick them up, as well as suggested that, though he didn’t have to sell the bull, the bull certainly was not welcome to return to that pasture. Word on the street is that the bull ran everyone he could up the fences at the auction mart.

Dad and I went home and straightened the bent brass hardware on my saddle. It was partly cracked, but would last long enough for me to get a replacement piece.

Greatly to Barb’s credit, we got home safe and sound after tangling with that Simmental, and it does me good to remember how she stayed between my knees in those critical moments.

Because there were other days, too.

Days when there was a whole lot of air beneath me.

The next Barb-related incident was only a few days later. On the day in question, it was just me and Manager. Manager always gets someone to help with pulling bulls because it’s just plain dangerous not to have at least a back-up buddy to call an ambulance. Sometimes his son, an old friend, a team roping buddy, or a neighbour helps. This year, everyone was busy. Even Dad was busy, so I was the very very last resort. Manager even snapped a picture of me with a bull on the end of a rope to send to his regular helpers, trying to taunt them in to helping him by telling them they’d been replaced by a girl. I’m not just speculating here; he told me he did that.

Anyway, joke’s on them, because I’m his #1 bull-wrangler now. Largely this is thanks to the winning combination of low expectations and high availability, but I also have to give a lot of credit to plain old dumb luck. Somehow we managed to find and load nine or so bulls over a couple days (more bulls were gotten in; these nine were just the ones that couldn’t be handled to chase to the corral).

Most of these troublesome bulls were tranquilized, as they are big, mature, Simmental bulls. The tranquilizer is funny stuff. Some bulls drop right down to a dead sleep from a keyed-up walk. Others slowly drift off, but wake up enough to walk if you push them; some will never go down, just continue on their way in a slobbery, staggering gait. Still others will slowly lay down and go to sleep but will wake up and abruptly return to their wild selves if at all pressured. I got to see the whole spectrum at work, and was sure glad we had it on hand. Even when it doesn’t work ideally, it still takes the edge off.

Anyway, back to my story.

Manager and I were after two of the Angus bulls that were on the south side of the pasture. They were smaller bulls, and not hard to handle, but we would be loading them because they were about as far from the corrals as they could be, and would likely not put up with being chased that far.

That morning, Manager met me at the gate into the pasture. He had to go up to the corral for his horse, but he sent me and Barb to start on a sweep in the corner of the pasture that the bulls usually kept to. Though we were after the two amiable Angus bulls, Manager sent me with the tranquilizer gun. I was to save the single shot for the big Simmental bull that kept darting into bushes to hide from people. If I was fortunate enough to catch that bull by surprise, the plan was to abandon the Angus bulls and just go after that one.

Manager got a practice dart and let me take a few shots at the “No Hunting” sign that was at the gate. I got a bit of a feel for it, but figured I probably shouldn’t shoot until I was close enough to see the whites of his eyes.

So off we went, Barb and I, packing a loaded, ready-to-shoot tranquilizer gun.

I was careful to keep the gun pointed well away from either of us. I doubt Barb is capable of emotionally recovering from being shot in the back of the head by her own rider, and I don’t think I would fare much better if I shot myself in the foot.

The herd of cows was all the way over in the corner, about as far away as they could get before I’d have turned around and looked elsewhere for them. The two Angus bulls were with them, but the big Simmental was nowhere to be seen, which was a major disappointment for me and my itchy trigger finger.

I got on the radio and told Manager the situation, then waited for him to get there with the trailer. When he arrived, we started to set the panels up around it, but were surprised to find that all the cows had come to gather around the truck and trailer, two bulls included. The bulls were standing just a few yards away, too tempting for Manager to resist. We set the panels up, then slowly got around one of the bulls, just on foot, and eased him towards the trailer. He tried to sneak away between us a couple of times, but then made the smart decision to just jump on the trailer. Since that had worked so slick, we gave it a try with the other bull, slowly getting around him and walking him up to the trailer. Unfortunately, this one was more pushy, and he squeezed out from between us a couple of times. We were keeping our movements calm and slow-moving, but the herd of cows had apparently had enough, so they started splitting up and running off. They’re kind of known for that; it was surprising they’d come to the trailer at all. I quickly got on Barb to try to head them off and gather them at the nearby dugout. The herd stopped at the dugout, so we figured we’d try to just chase the bull to the trailer and see if he’d jump in. We were able to push him calmly towards the trailer for a couple hundred yards. Then, the bull snapped into action and we were flat out, just trying to keep up to him.

He didn’t seem to care much about which direction he ran in, so we were back and forth across the clearing we had originated in, diving into the bushes on either end. Manager tailed him into the bushes, and I went wide, ready to turn him when he came out again. It was on one of these roundabout routes that Barb, so good, so sure-footed, so willing to run, did me dirty once again.

We were flat out and tight to the perimeter of one bush, since I had to make up for covering more ground, when Barb spotted a large mound of dirt. It was an anthill. Ducking as I was under branches that reached out from the bush, and in a hurry to get around to the other side, I never saw it coming. Barb stopped and whirled around so fast, it was like she turned right inside out on herself. One second she was there under me, and the next, I was belly-up next to the anthill. Barb must have made a heck of a low, catty move, because I hardly felt a thing when I landed; just an easy little plop into the long, cool grass that grows on the shady side of a bush. As falls go, it was probably the nicest one I’ve ever had, though a little to the left or right and I’d have had a stick in my back or a neck full of ants.

Since neither of those things happened, though, I was not so angry with Barb. Also, there was no time to hold a grudge, as we had some catching up to do. I jumped back on and continued the chase.

The bull had decided to take more advantage of the bushes that he was diving in to and was now stopped in a very small, but treacherously thick, willow clump.

Manager was getting his rope out, so I jumped off and walked in to the bush to push the bull out. The bull didn’t seem terribly concerned about me, so I wasn’t too eager to test the limitations of his patience. I just stood at a safe-ish distance and threw stuff at him until he decided another sprint was in order. Off he ran, with Manager hot on his tail. By the time I caught up, they were in a bush on the other end of the clearing again, and before I had time to wonder which direction they would be coming out, out they came, tearing back towards the willow clump I’d just left. Manager hadn’t gotten within range for a decent shot yet, but the bull abruptly stopped in a patch of silver willow, allowing us both to catch up. I pulled my rope out, since I can only rope things that are standing still, but Manager was already swinging, so he took his shot.

Manager jokes sometimes that he can only rope things when they’re running. Only it’s not a joke, he actually is really good at catching things as they run, but pretty bad at catching them if they stand still.

Anyway, he missed by a fair margin, and the bull was off again. He ploughed through one more bush, then Manager was ready for him, getting up close enough to take his shot. He made an excellent throw and caught the bull around the neck, then he dallied up and his big dun gelding held the bull again.

“Get two heels or nothing,” Manager instructed me.

I felt a lot of pressure to do the former rather than the latter, but need not have worried. By the prayerful intercessions of whatever saint it is up there that wants me to look good, I made a nifty loop and caught both heels on my first try.

If Manager was half as impressed with me as I was with myself, then my reputation is doing pretty good.

After I tightened up on the heels, it was Barb’s turn. Fortunately, she seemed to have gotten rid of the anthill-triggered nonsense and was back to being Good Barb. She leaned into the rope and pulled the bull over. Manager jumped off and tied the bull’s front feet together (that’s above my pay grade), then his back feet as well. I kept his back legs stretched while Manager went to bring the trailer closer. I then continued to hold the bull while Manager backed the trailer right up to the bull, set up the panels, fed the neck-rope through the trailer window, then untied him. When Manager was done all the hard work, I quickly let go of the heel rope and got to the neck rope that was hanging out of one of the trailer windows. I dallied onto that and kept it snug while Manager encouraged the bull to get up. The bull obliged in short order, and we were off to bag another one.

Barb had unseated me twice in the same manner, but I felt she had made up for it in her excellent handling of the high-stress situations we had been in.

Bulls posing an actual danger to us?

No problem.

Brush piles and anthills?

Problem.

Part of Barb’s issue is that she can handle a finite amount of stress. I would say that she can handle approximately three stressful things at a time. One of the things that stresses her out is the location of her buddy. This doesn’t mean that she needs to be right by her buddy; what really gets her worked up is knowing that her buddy is in closer proximity to home or the trailer than she is. If she feels that her bud might get home sooner that she, she only has two stressful things left, and one of them is usually that I’m riding her. This means that when I'm riding alone she has the capacity to handle one more stressful thing before the vessel starts to crack. Sometimes this third thing is wrangling large bulls, and other times it’s the moose that she saw running over a hill half an hour ago. And other times, it's anthills.

It isn’t just Barb that is like this, because there is even a term for this build-up of stress. It’s called trigger stacking. I heard a horse trainer on YouTube talk about it once. He used the example of riding down a trail and a rabbit jumping out of the bush. Your horse might spook a little at that first rabbit. When another rabbit jumps out later, your horse might spook a little more, then even more when the third rabbit jumps out a ways down the trail. It’s up to the rider to figure out how many rabbits the horse can handle before coming unglued.

Barb is a three-rabbit mare.

I explain this because I’ve got a couple more Barb situations to get through, and her behaviour, in hind sight, can be understood in light of this trigger stacking.

The last bulls to pull in the pasture were the Herefords, and they came out upwards of a week after the others, so the horses had a nice long break. We had plenty of riders out, as the owners of the bulls had come to help, so we were going to do a big sweep of the west pasture and gather everything at the central dugout. From there, we would cut out the bulls and push them into the alley, then trail them back to the corrals. There were six or so bulls to get, but the Herefords are quite amiable, if a bit lazy, so getting a handful of them rounded up in one morning is not near the feat it would be in the Simmental pasture.

We trailered down the rough trail to the west side, to save the horses a couple miles of walking, then unloaded at the gate. Right there in the corner, looking over the gate at us, was one of the bulls.

We unloaded the horses, bridled up, got the gate opened, then some of us got around the bull to keep him in the corner while the others were still getting mounted up. We were already feeling pleased with ourselves for having bagged a free one.

Only, when we were all ready and the bull was ten feet from the gate, with seven riders looming behind him, he decided he didn’t want to go through it. Instead, he closed his eyes and calmly walked through the closest gap between horses, widening the gap as he went.

We tried several times to head him off and get him through the gate, but he just kept employing the same old trick. At that point, we were committed to getting him, or he might be worked up enough to hide in a bush where we’d never find him. Out came the ropes.

I was the most prompt in dismounting, tightening my saddle, jumping back on, and pulling out my rope. The owner of the bull assured us that he tie-broke all of his bulls, though he wouldn’t be exactly halter-broke. This assurance made me perhaps a little too eager to get a rope landed on him. After tangling with all those Simmentals, I was sure a Hereford would be no problem. And indeed, the Hereford wasn’t the problem. Barb was.

The bull had gone for another attempt at escape, so a bunch of us cut him off. He stood there watching us pretty calmly, so I went ahead and took my shot. I hadn’t accounted for how much wider the bull’s horns made his head. Though they were curled down towards his chin, they added quite a bit of width for my rope to get over. As a result of this and also of my generally haphazard roping skills, my loop came to rest across half of the bull’s head. I was going to attempt to circle around him and jimmy the rope into a better position when the bull shook his head and all I had left inside the loop was one horn.

“Should I take one horn, or just let it fall?” I asked Dad.

“Sure, take one horn; that’ll probably slow him down.”

So I circled around to get at a better angle to tighten on the horn.

As I was letting some coils out to walk around the bull, I noticed that I had a bit of a tangled rope. I stopped and began to fumble with the coils, desperately trying to straighten them. The bull also made an observation around this time, noticing that the spot I had vacated left him plenty of room to get by. Up until now, the bull had been pretty much at a walk or a trot, but for whatever reason he decided to change tactics (perhaps it was due to a slight pressure change in one horn), and heaved himself into lope away from us.

I spurred Barb into action to keep up with him, but something was amiss. Barb had indeed jumped into action, but the motion felt rather jolty. I looked down and seen that we were cruising through some buck brush. Now, Barb does have a little quirk about buck brush, thistle, and silver willow patches. She doesn’t like the pokey feeling on her legs, so she will lift her legs high as she walks through it, attempt to jump over the whole thing if it is a small patch, and/or decide to save herself the trouble of the last bit of it by taking a flying leap to get out of the patch. At the moment, it felt like she was trying out a new theory, which was to continually jump through the patch. I was a little annoyed that she had chosen this moment to be inspired by a mule deer, but I went back to focusing on my rope and the bull.

Shortly after this, there came a moment when Barb’s momentum was no longer carrying us in the same general direction as the bull, and when I tried to turn her and got minimal response, I began to clue in that something was afoot that I had not consented to.

By the time we were through the buck brush and it became apparent that Barb was not just jumping through the pokey sticks, she was wearing me at approximately the angle that one of the ladies of the British royal family might wear one of those strange little fascinator hats. I was not contemplating fascinator hats at the moment though, because I still had the remnant of the tangled ball of a rope in my hand, and the bull was rapidly whisking away any slack that remained. I was departing from Barb on her left side, while the bull was departing from us on her right. I focused my last few moments attached to the horse to save us both, and got my hands, reins, and saddle horn free of the coils. Once I was sure there were no stray parts lingering in the rope to jerk me towards the bull in much the same fashion as the Balrog caught Gandalf, I flung the coils away from my wreckage.

I made it a few more hops before flopping off the side of Barb, who had carried me again towards the soft, long, cool grass on the edge of a bush. I think perhaps she is banking on there being a well-placed stick around to do me in, but she was not so lucky. Though it was not as nice a landing as in the anthill tomfoolery, it was at least not as winding as the brush-pile situation. There was, however, a far bigger audience for this one. Most of them had continued running after bull (after seeing me fall), but they had kindly left behind one rider to inquire after my well-being.

The most disgruntling aspect of the business was that I had lost my radio somewhere along the way. I had a fairly vivid memory of all the rough bits of riding I had done, but the radio wasn’t in any of those spots. By the time I found it over on a hillside I had ridden on before my rope was even out (Dad had to help lead me to it by calling on his radio in another one-sided game of Marco-Pollo), they had the bull caught and loaded not far away.

The rest of the Herefords came in according to plan, and Barb got to make plenty of miles at a brisk trot to make better use of her obvious excess of energy. Though the fall hadn’t hurt much, the awkward angle of riding, short though it was, made me sore for nearly a week.

Barb has never bucked before, so that’s what got me wondering what her issue was. In hindsight, I can identify a couple of the stacked triggers. First of all, she hadn’t been ridden in over a week, so she was feeling pretty fresh. This has never caused her to buck before, but adding the extra pressure of sucking her cinch up tight right out of gate, and then jabbing her perhaps a little too enthusiastically to go after the bull, was enough to set her off. I also pieced together, after she tried to bedazzle another horse with her best flirtatious nickers and sultry prances, that she was feeling extra mare-ish that day.

To top it all off, I suspect Barb also didn’t like the look of that big, white, horned Hereford head. The first time she saw Charolais cattle, I had to jump off of her and lead the horse I was ponying so that it was between her and the cows. She doesn’t handle change well.

All of these triggers were things that Barb doesn’t have big issues with, but added up together, I guess she felt the need to communicate her opinion about them. I got the message.

Now we’re on to the last two happenings involving Barb. Incidentally, they also involve south pasture cows. You may have noticed that this is where most of the exciting stuff happens. If you’re getting into the cattle business for the excitement of it all, Simmentals are the breed for you.

It seemed like we just got the bulls all rounded up out of the co-op pasture and it was already time to round up the cows.

One of the south pasture herds has gained a bit of a reputation for being hard to handle. Actually, there are at least three herds like that, but this particular herd is the farthest away from the corrals, and needs to be guided straight through the middle of the pasture. They are brilliant at scattering, flat out running, and stopping dead in a bush without a twitch of movement to alert a person to their whereabouts. They will run around you, through you, over you, and/or under you to accomplish this.

To be fair, the whole herd must not be as determined as all that, because we got all but five or so pairs in on the first run (though it was indeed a flat out run for us seven riders after forty cows), but those five really determined cows tend to stand out in one’s memory.

Shortly after we had gotten most of that herd in, Dad and I were driving up to the corrals to help with the sorting. We had come early, packing horses, in the hopes that we might see some strays loitering along the road. And we did. Two pairs and a single cow appeared in front of us on the pasture road. We quickly jumped out and unloaded the horses, then took off after them. We had hoped they would keep following the road right up to the corral, but in less than a minute, they were stretched out in big ground-eating jogs, each picking a different direction.

Instead of trying to gather them and inevitably losing, Dad and I decided to go after the single cow. She was the one that had chased a rider to get away from the herd right off the bat when we were moving them the other day, and we figured we recognized her as one that had to be roped last year. Since we had already failed to bring them all in, at least we would bring the problem cow in.

It became clear very quickly that we were not going to have much success in chasing this cow. A couple times, she did the basic burn and turn maneuvers to get away, but we were staying with her pretty effectively, so she employed her other method of just pushing on the horses until she was moving in her preferred direction.

Dad instructed me to tighten my saddle and get ready to rope her while he held her in the clearing. It was not much of a clearing; more of a hilltop mostly surrounded by bushes, so I didn’t have much time.

Since I’m not incapable of learning from my mistakes, I checked that my rope wasn’t tangled before casting my loop. It’s a good thing I did, because it was horribly tangled and needed to be fully re-coiled before I went to the cow. Dad was complaining about how long I was taking, but I knew he would complain more if he had to crawl around on the ground looking for lost fingers that had to be sewn back onto my hand.

I got my loop ready, and got up to the cow. Dad had been getting run back and forth, closer and closer to the bushes as the cow pushed right alongside his horse. I got into position right behind him, then he pulled away as I took his place, so that the cow’s head was right by my kneecap. Even I couldn’t miss that.

I dropped my rope on, then eased to a stop to tighten up slowly.

Once she found the end of the rope, the cow didn’t pull all that hard, but my relief at this was short-lived. Realizing that running away wasn’t working anymore, the cow decided to run towards me. She would circle me a bit at the end of the rope, then put her head down and come barreling towards me and poor Barb.

I was afraid for my life.

But Barb rose beautifully to the occasion.

Since Barb is not at all afraid of cows when they charge, she wouldn’t move to get away until I urged her to, which meant things stayed under some semblance of control. We would turn and face the cow, pivoting with her as she circled, then, when her head came down and she ran at me, Barb would whirl us to the left and run ahead of the wicked Simmental, stopping and turning to face her when the rope became tight again. We did a few of these delicate dances before I goofed up and we had to change the maneuver a little.

On one of our whirl-and-run moves, the cow caught up a little too fast and the slack of the rope ended up underneath my right leg. When the rope got tight and we turned to face the cow again, my leg got pulled up right to Barb’s neck before I managed to lift it over the rope. Between the loud ZIP! of the rope pulling along the leather, the feel of the rope along her ribs, and the sight of my leg coming up towards her eye, it is a miracle that Barb kept her head, but she did, that wonderful mare. Not wanting to do that again, I altered our little dance so that we no longer turned to face the cow. Barb preferred to hold while facing the cow, but I preferred to have a lower chance of dying. Unfortunately, we still did have to face the beast, as Dad instructed that we should walk with her whenever she was going in the general direction of the road. Now we were holding the cow, running away from the cow, and following the cow, all depending on where abouts we were on the circle and what the cow’s whim was.

I was beginning to unravel and get short with my father, who was attempting to catch a foot of the cow so that she couldn’t chase me anymore. He had one caught for a while, but it had fallen off when we let the cow pull towards the road.

I heard another trailer rattling up the road, so I demanded that Dad, who generally dislikes asking for help, wave the trailer over so we could load the cow. Since he couldn’t very well run for his own trailer and leave me unsupervised at the mercy of the cow, he was forced to do this. We weren’t far from the road, so Neighbour bounced his trailer up towards us a bit. Before long, Dad was able to grab a heel, and we laid the cow down. Neighbour backed his trailer to her head, then we strung my rope through the trailer window. When Dad let her heel go, she didn’t try very hard to get away before just jumping in and getting it over with.

I didn’t know how to communicate my gratitude towards Barb for getting me out of that with all my fingers, so I just made her cinch good and loose and tried not to bug her as we rode back to our trailer.

In light of how good Barb was in that sticky situation, it is difficult to come to terms with what a turd she was in a very similar situation.

A few days after we had caught that single cow, a crew of us went out after the others, particularly two pairs that were hanging together. We fanned out in the area that they were last seen (several hours past) diving into a bush, and someone was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of them as they scurried back under cover. They called the whole posse over, and seven riders surrounded the thick bush they were in. Manager tied his horse to a tree and walked in, and it took him several minutes just to find the cows. When he finally did get them to move, one cow took two calves and shot out of the bush going south-west. The other cow came crashing out in my direction, heading south-east. Rumour has it there was a third cow in that bush, one that just kept doing circles around Manager and refused to come out. That was not my concern, though, because the the cow that had chosen to run out my side of the bush was my responsibility. Neighbour was also nearby and assumed responsibility with me. We took off after the cow.

Not far into the new venture of ours, I was concerned that we were not likely to gain control. There had been some impression, before we started, really, that we would try to get the cows north to the corral. Now we were flying after a cow, barely able to keep up enough to watch her tail swish away into the next bush. I shouted to my partner that we should try to head her to the south east corner, then take her through the open farm fields to Neighbour’s corrals.

It was a good plan, but a wishful one. The cow was stretched out in a gallop and showing no signs of tiring, as our poor horses were. She was also able to dive straight through bushes, whereas we had to race around them, both out of respect for the skin on our faces, and to get to a vantage point where we could see that she had definitely come through. Every time I thought we got ahead of her, I’d get up the hill and realize she was not in the bush I was past, but, in fact, entering the next one.

By the time we got to the south end, the cow was a couple hundred yards ahead of us, and we were unable to turn her to the east side of the lake that runs through the south fence line. When Neighbour and I got to the lake is when we realized that neither of us had eyes on the cow. We stopped to listen, and as we stopped, Manager caught up to us. We explained the situation, then we all heard a great crash of trees and squeaking of wires. Either a moose had decided to crash through the fence in approximately the place where we suspected the cow had headed, or the cow had done so. We rode through the trees and up to where the fence was stretched out and broken, abandoned that cow, and got on the radios to figure out how the other riders had made out. They were on the other side of the lake, having trailed a cow of similar athletic abilities, so we rode around to meet them. On our way around, we could see our cow, half a mile away now in the next field, still stretched out in an extended trot. When we got around to the other side, we heard the other tale of defeat.

Their cow had led them on a similar chase, then had also chosen to jump through the fence to escape them, but before this had happened, the two calves that were with her had grown tired of trying to keep up and had stuck together in some bush. Once again, the posse gathered round the hideaways. This time, the plan was for someone to push the bush and for everyone else to have ropes ready to catch the little buggers.

It took two people on foot to get the calves out of the bush, since they just kept circling around and trying to stay in. Once they did come out, they made their mothers proud by bolting in different directions. Manager was flat out after one, and a couple riders took off after the other. I had been on the side of the bush that nothing came out of, so I got around just in time to see Manager throw a long loop after the calf that he was struggling to gain ground on. His aim was good, but the loop was too big, and the calf jumped nearly clean through it, but for the last toe, on which Manager managed to pull his rope up and dally. The calf was quickly tripped, and Dad and I, who were nearest, ran to get a rope on her neck before she wriggled out. I was there first, so I dropped my rope on the calf where she lay. Manager and I stretched her out some, then Dad took his leg-tying rope and tied her legs together a little, so she couldn’t pull herself to death against my neck rope. Then Manager took his rope back and ran off to help with the other calf, which had made it to the next bush. Dad rode off to help them too, leaving me and Barb alone with the calf. Barb was too tired to put up much protest at being left alone, but she was clearly tense. She didn’t mind all the other horses being gone, but Mexico, Dad’s horse, was her only friend from home. And he had just ridden off in a direction that made him closer than she was to the trailers. As long as the calf was laying there and we just had to stand, we would be fine.

Fortunately, by the time the calf managed to wobble upright on its tied legs, a few horses were already riding back towards us. This calmed Barb down and allowed us to direct our focus to the calf.

The calf, now upright, had an alarming expression on its bovine face. She was a calf at the end of her rope (and on the end of mine, too, which was bad news for me). She had realized she was cornered and now thought she had nothing to lose. It’s a very distinct expression. Their ears point forward, but are a little floppy; their heads are up as high as they can be, and twitch around to hone in on new targets; and they glare. They positively glare at something just before committing to doing something dumb.

I stayed at the end of the rope, hoping she would reconsider some things if she had some space, but she just kept glaring at me and Barb. It was making me uneasy. Others rode up, and she twitched her head a little to look at them, then resumed her glare towards me.

The plan was, someone was already on the way to the corner of the pasture where we were. We would load the calves up, then pack the horses and ourselves in and trailer back up to the corrals. Manager and Dad would ride back to the corrals so that Dad could grab our trailer and meet us along the way, as we had to head out.

They rode off towards the corrals, then the others rode off to open the fence up for the trailer or to help push the second calf up to the opening. I was left with the calf again.

I continued not to like how she was looking at me, so I circled around her to get away from the glare. She attempted to circle with me, but her tied legs tripped her up and she fell to the ground. She rolled up enough to turn her head, so that she could still glare at me, but I preferred her glare from down there, so I was satisfied. Barb was acting pretty miffed about Mexico leaving again, and heading in an even straighter trajectory to the trailers, what’s more, but with the calf laying down, I could afford to concentrate on keeping her civil.

Soon, a trailer arrived to load the calves up, and the second calf was being guided out to the opening. Since that calf was already up and walking, they went about loading it up first. Being over staffed, Neighbour felt that they would have that calf loaded in no time, so he left them to it, walked the short distance to where I held mine, and untied her legs. As he did this, I shortened up on the rope to have more control. A laughable theory, in hindsight.

She got up.

She continued glaring at me.

I held very still, hoping to not provoke her.

The guys working on loading the calf were having to team up and heave the stubborn thing into the trailer, so it was taking a little longer than expected.

Finally, my calf made her move.

She darted towards me with that slack-eared, beady-eyed determination that comes with nothing to lose. I urged Barb to move, not afraid of the calf hitting us, but very much afraid it would run between her legs and tangle us up.

It was not just Barb’s legs I should have worried about.

Barb took advantage of the desperate maneuver and used it as an excuse to run in the same direction that Mexico had left her. Fighting with the horse while looking back at the calf proved to be too much for me, and I felt the uncomfortably familiar feeling of the rope under my saddle fender. I wasn’t thrilled with the predicament, but I did think, “Okay, we can come back from this. I just did this with a way bigger cow a couple days ago.”

But on that occasion, Barb had Mexico, her emotional support horse, near at hand (or hoof, in their case). Now, she was alone and friendless, and sure to die if she did not take immediate action to carry us closer to the trailer (and by ‘us’, I just mean I was permitted to come along if I stayed on top). Therefor, there was snake zipping along her ribs (the rope), and it’s large, leathery head was flying up towards her eyeball (my leg, in the stirrup).

As I tried to get Barb to turn and face the calf, my leg only pulled closer to her neck, causing her to spook more and more sideways, causing me to let more and more of my rope out, causing it to zip more and more scarily along Barb.

I held out hope that Barb would come to her senses before we came to the end of the rope, but I only had twenty feet of hope left, and Barb was moving straight sideways at a truly terrific speed. I fed the coils out, then resigned myself to defeat as the fuzzy end of the rope circled my saddle horn then exited my sight beneath my fender. Once my leg could go back to where it ought to sit, and I no longer had to concentrate on the rope, I pulled Barb out of her lateral bid to freedom, shortened the reins, straitened myself, and jogged quickly back to the calf, which had shockingly stayed in the place that we had last tugged on her before I was out of rope. She was still glaring at me. Neighbour cautiously slunk up to the tail of the rope, grabbed it, and passed it back up me, happy to have me as the target of the calf’s wrath. He called his son over, and that Neighbour put another rope on its neck, so that she would be between us.

“I guess I should have left it’s legs tied!” He commented, laughing.

“At least she just stood there,” I said, “I would not have wanted to call Manager to tell him I lost the calf he caught... as long as we get this thing loaded now, he never needs to know.”

Neighbour laughed and agreed. We got the calf loaded and all was well that ended well.

But someone squealed on me. In fact, I believe it was the same person who ratted me out for falling at the anthill and getting bucked off by a little crow-hop, none of which Manager had actually witnessed.

I’ll have to see if I’m still Manager’s #1 bull wrangler next year, after my own flesh-and-blood father told him all my secrets.