Wednesday, May 31, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Getting started
The world has known
some famous horses.
A l e x a n d e r ’s
horse
Bucephalus, for instance,
who had one blue eye, a star
on his forehead, and died
after the battle of Hyaspes
in 326 BC. He was celebrity
enough to be buried with
honors, to have his tale told
down through history, and
to this day has a province in
Punjab named after him.
Comanche is another
famous horse. He was rid-
den by Captain Myles
Keough at the Little Bighorn
and found two days after
the battle, badly wounded.
Captain Keough, of course,
didn’t survive the fight,
but his horse did, and was
ultimately nursed back to
health and retired by the
Army. Comanche is now
stuffed, like another famous
horse named Trigger, and
on display at the University
of Kansas Natural History
Museum.
The list of famous horses
is virtually endless.
Somehow, in a twist on
the natural order of things,
the world’s most successful
predator, and arguably its
most successful flight animal
have — in the best cases —
been able to merge into a sin-
gle creature and accomplish
amazing things.
Horses are believed to
have been first domesticated
somewhere on the Eurasian
steppe about 5,500 years ago,
but our appreciation for them
goes back much further. Our
Paleolithic ancestors found
them fascinating enough to
paint them on cave walls
more than 30,000 years ago.
Which brings me to Remi,
a two-year-old colt down in
our barn. I fell in love with
him from the moment I first
saw him. He was only six
days old, but alarm bells
immediately started ringing
in my head. My blood pres-
sure spiked. I momentarily
lost the capacity for intelli-
gent speech.
Standing there, watching
him show off his newfound
legs in the tall grass, I was
also doing a lot of math in
my head. It occurred to me
that he might be the last colt
I’ll ever start. That’s just a
result of hope and calm cal-
culation: hope that he lives
a long and healthy life, and
the fact of my own advanc-
ing age.
The first colt I started
was an adopted two-year-old
mustang I picked out of a
corral at the Litchfield Wild
Horse Corrals in California.
I’m not even sure why I
did that, other than that for
$100 it was in my financial
wheelhouse, and I figured it
couldn’t go terribly wrong.
And it didn’t. I hauled him
out to the big desert ranch
where I was working and in
the evenings, after the cow
work was done, would run
him into the willow corrals
and sort him out.
There were some others.
A horse I called Super Dave,
after Super Dave Osborne
and his talent for pulling stu-
pid stunts. A passel of rough-
string horses on a big Nevada
ranch. And I started a few
horses for my granddad —
including one that bucked
me off in front of a school
bus full of cheering children.
My grandfather started
more horses than I can count.
But he was also of the old
school of horsemen who
thought that a horse was
meant to be “broken.” He
had tremendous success with
cutting horses even when his
methods were often, to the
modern eye, unreasonably or
unnecessarily severe. Toward
the end of his life I know that
he had regrets about those
methods, because he told me
so.
The whole “natural
horsemanship” approach
was only then filtering out
into the broader world and
I think, given the chance to
do it all over again, he would
have changed his ways
considerably.
Anyone who has ever
started a horse from the
ground up, and ultimately
swung a leg over for that first
ride, can appreciate what the
moment means. It’s singular
in a way that not many things
truly are. After a long court-
ship, it’s something like that
very first kiss in a long, lov-
ing, and mutually beneficial
relationship. I like that anal-
ogy because the first ride
comes with no small measure
of apprehension, and plenty
of room for the unknown.
And we want it to be perfect.
PHOTO PROVIDED
Craig Rullman and Remi, working together.
No fuss, no muss, and cer-
tainly no bucking.
There was a time I rode
bucking horses on purpose,
though that ended with bro-
ken ribs and a wedged ver-
tebrae on a horse called
8-ball at an Apache Junction,
Arizona, rodeo.
But Remi and I are doing
something else. And mostly,
that requires that I not be an
idiot. It is entirely too easy
to be an idiot with horses.
Moreover, it takes a long
time — and a few stiff drams
of humility — to really learn
that.
A smart person once said
that starting a horse is like
looking in the mirror. If
you don’t like what you are
seeing in the horse, look at
yourself. There’s more to
it than that, of course, but I
think that’s close enough to
the truth to have tremendous
value.
With horses — and in
human relationships, too
— we do so much better
when we stop insisting on
ourselves, and our piety, and
merely listen. A good horse
really can teach us to be bet-
ter humans, and they often
do, if we just shut up and lis-
ten long enough.
Maybe I’ll never start
another colt. It’s impossible
to predict. The world heaves
around and we can’t possibly
know what’s in the offing.
But a couple of days ago I
walked Remi out into the
round pen and we went after
our groundwork routine.
I was watching him
closely and after a few min-
utes I realized he was trying
to tell me something. I wasn’t
sure what, and then I real-
ized, in a gift of crystal clar-
ity, that he was just bored. He
was ready for more and he
wanted me to know it.
So, out there in the sand,
under the bluest May sky,
I took another look at the
cinch, poured sweet prom-
ises into his ear, then put my
foot in the stirrup and swung
aboard for that first kiss.
And it was heavenly.
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