In 3:3 James reminds us of the pliability of horses saying “if we put bits into the mouths of horses so that they obey us, we guide their whole bodies as well.” Oddly, I found these kind of horses that I knew as a boy in the Winnipeg Assiniboine Park Zoo. They arrived there just this past summer.
Visitors to the zoo now get the chance to see Percheron horses, workhorses that once were the power source on Manitoba farms. 4.7 acres on the north end of the zoo contain a barn built from a kit complete with a golden horse weather vane, pastures, paddocks, a carriage shed, and walking paths. Visitors can go for summer wagon rides and winter sleigh rides.
Every horse I know of (except the two wild “p” horses) has a name: Trigger, Buttercup, Silver, Bucephalus, Scout, Champion, Tornado, Pegasus, Black Beauty, Flicka, Shadowfax, Seabiscuit, Bill. These four geldings in the Zoo hearken to the names Bob, Tom, Ice, and Flame.
The Saskatchewan horses on our farm had names too: “Farty old Maud” and Bob, Blackie and Lady, Star, Queenie, June, Nellie. Horse paraphernalia have names too: harness, collar, traces, halter, reins, bit, curry comb, blinders.
Our sole saddle sat on the rail in the barn for show because bareback was how we rode! Horses listen to ‘people’ language but learn the important word ‘Whoa’, the ‘oa” pronounced like one of Santa’s Ho Ho’s.
Horses guided our history and our farm too. An old snapshot catches two aunts with the horse my dad rode a 13 mile trek to Vibank, SK, to court my mum in 1936.
Horses powered the mower, the rake, and hay rack in haying season. At harvest time they cut the grain with the binder, pulled the rack loaded with sheaves to the threshing machine, and hauled the grain home in the box wagon.
In 1950 at the noon break on a hot harvest threshing August day, the reins thrust into my confident seven year old hands, at my dad command, I lead the giants Blackie and Lady to water down through the gate to the well. And these horses took us to town to deliver cream to the train station and to pick up mail and groceries. Late in the evening under the frozen starlight, their jingling harness accompanied our singing of Christmas carols from beneath the horse blankets in the bobsled the four and half miles to church going to midnight Mass.
Through the 50’s six of us rode the buggy or sleigh to our one room school hitched to our white horse, June. Nellie, a fully spirited black Indian pony, succeeded her but with little tricks like barely beating the train at its crossing–the engineer’s long train whistle sounding his fear and admonition–, or like squeezing through the partially open barn door to unseat me, or dodging through the willows to effect the same purpose, of course, unsuccessfully.
But we had many long hours together herding the ranging cattle in the fall and spring, me riding bareback, letting Nellie have her head, she the expert, me just hanging on, wind whistling by my face and through my hair, enjoying a sense of freedom and oneness, sharing the smell and sweat of her work.
I look at Tom, Bob, Ice, and Flame in their artificial world at the Zoo, magnificent animals some might term “hay burners”, and remember those many creatures who were daily companions and workers, and I think it is a good to be reminded of their contribution to the pioneer days of the prairie west and especially to be attentive to June and Nellie, the two horses I find somehow still attached to my soul.
++++++++++++++++++++++
All photos and captions courtesy of Frank Obrigewitsch, SJ.