I'll try to remember all I know about our family horses.
I remember going out to do haying when I was really little, maybe 5 or 6. The horses, Babe and Nig, pulled the hay rack and we all rode on it out to the field. Babe was a big, brown mare with a mind of her own. She was so strong that she could stand flat footed by the side of a 5 foot fence and leap right over it if she thought we were going to catch her and make her work. All the family would have to gang up on her and surround her and then she would let herself be caught. I don't ever remember being afraid of her, even as big as she was, so she must have been gentle. Nig was short for the nasty bad word for black things, but we didn't know it was a bad name. It was just the horse's name. He was very black and pretty old, I think. I don't remember what happened to him, but he wasn't around for more than a couple of years in my memory. After he died or was sold, that left Babe alone and my dad bought a tractor so she wasn't needed. He sold her to someone who was going to pick her up the next day so he tied her to a big bunch of bushes across the street from our house by a ditch full of irrigation water so her last night would be peaceful and happy and she'd have plenty to eat and drink. All I know is that when the man came to pick her up, he and my dad found her drowned. Whether she fell in and couldn't get up or what, nobody knows. I seem to remember that she had a broken leg, though, so it must have been a struggle of some kind. I just remember that my dad felt bad because the other man was counting on having a good strong workhorse and didn't get anything. And of course Dad didn't get paid either.
The next horse we got about when I was 9 or 10. Her name was Grace and she was a bay American Quarterhorse steeple chaser. That means she was a racehorse who jumped over fences in races. She was about 20 years old when we got her, but I remember when we first tried riding her that she would walk sedately down to the end of the driveway then suddenly turn around and run like the dickens back to the fence. I'm sure she was used to walking up to the starting gate and then running as fast as she could on the track. I remember when I got to be a better rider that I would gallop on her across the field and she would jump over all the irrigation ditches. It was scary but fun. My dad had bought her to breed and she had 2 colts. The first one was born with his front feet turned under so he was walking on his ankles. The veterinarian came every day to give him a shot to help the problem. It eventually got better and he could walk normally, but all the treatments made him really wild. I can't remember what we named him. He was always getting into trouble by trying to jump fences and get out of the pasture. He couldn't jump high enough and would get caught in the barbed wire. He was always getting cut really bad. I think my dad sent him to someone who broke him to ride, but he was always pretty wild and none of us dared ride him. Finally my dad sold him. The second colt was called Goldie and he was a little milder. When he was still a colt, he and Grace got out of the pasture and onto the highway that went by our house. A man from Smoot coming home from a school board meeting around 11 p.m. saw something move in the road and then slammed into Grace. It was a terrible wreck. I remember being brought suddenly awake by the screeching of brakes and a loud bang. We all ran outside to see what had happened and there in the headlights glare was Grace. The impact had sent her through the windshield into the passenger side of the front seat. When the guy braked, it had shot her back out onto the roadway. Very luckily, the man wasn't hurt hardly at all. His car was totaled and nobody knew what had happened to Goldie. One of the neighbors went in search of him and found him in someone's yard, jumping out of his skin in fear. They brought him home and calmed him down but it was pretty traumatic for him. We never found out how the horses got out, whether someone had left a gate open or if they had rubbed it open themselves, and my dad was worried about the insurance company making him pay for the car damage, but everything worked out well, I think. I remember that Karla was always so mad that she had slept through it all and nobody had woken her up to let her in on all the excitement. I HAD tried to wake her up, but she didn't respond. Too bad.
When Goldie was older, he was sent to a horse trainer and got ridden a little bit. I know Don [Cutler] liked to ride him when we visited in Star Valley, but my dad was getting too old to ride and after a few years he sold the last horse.
So that's all I remember about horses growing up. I know that your mother [Adele Harrison Cook] probably rode Grace more than anyone. She would mount up with some of her friends and they would ride up the canyon and have a nice day. We all could saddle Grace and get the bridle on, but she had the trick of taking a big breath when you tightened up the saddle girths so when you got on and she let out her breath, the saddle was loose. You'd have to get off and tighten and tighten. I was never strong enough to get it on good and tight, but at least I never fell off. She didn't like to be caught either and would just run away so fast nobody could catch her. A bucket of grain usually worked to get close enough to grab her halter.
And that is the saga of the Harrison Horses!
By Vicki Harrison Cutler 1/11/2015