The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [42]
Harry did have one last trick up his sleeve, an old cowboy method that would certainly keep the horse at home. Out on the range, without anywhere to tie up a horse, riders needed to teach their horses to stay when ground-tied. A ground-tied animal stands quietly if his lead rope is simply dropped on the ground. To teach this skill, you tied the horse’s lead rope to a big rubber tire. A horse could drag the tire around, but he wouldn’t get far. The weight of the tire would keep the lead rope from getting tangled, and the soft rubber wouldn’t hurt the horse’s legs. When Harry suggested the technique for Snowman, the doctor at first thought he was crazy. But Harry assured him that it would work and would only be a temporary measure, a few days at most, until Snowman learned to stay put.
For the next few days, when Harry went down to the barn in the morning, he felt a mingling of relief and disappointment to find that Snowy wasn’t there. Deep down, he had been rooting for the horse. But Harry reminded himself of his father’s rules. If you want to make a living at horses, mind the dollars and cents. Never be cruel to a horse, never sell a horse to a bad home. Be thrifty, but don’t scrimp on feed and care. Treat animals as you would like to be treated, but don’t for a minute lose sight of the fact that you have a business to run.
Snowman was a “man’s best friend” kind of horse. (illustration credits 9.1)
It doesn’t take long for most horses to forget where they came from. A nice pasture and good food is usually enough to keep them in a paddock. After two days, Harry figured that Snowman was at last settled in his new home.
A new boarder came in that day, a customer who would pay eighty dollars a month, and Harry gave him Snowman’s old stall. Snowman’s halter came off the hook by his stall, moved to a nail in the tackroom with the other school-horse halters. The privately owned horses had leather halters with shiny brass name tags on them; the school horses’ halters were interchangeable. As far as Harry was concerned, the Snowman saga was over.
But a few mornings later, Snowman was back. The big gray horse was standing in the middle of the stable courtyard.
First, Harry just stared. Then he started to laugh.
Snowman’s head was high. When he saw Harry laughing, he shook his head, rattling the snap on his lead rope. Behind him dragged a big rubber tire, tangled with a piece of board ripped from the pasture fence. There was no mistaking the pride in the horse’s eyes.
Standing in the barnyard, looking at the clunky flea-bitten gray dragging the heavy rubber tire, Harry realized that he had somehow missed the plain truth. He unclipped the tattered lead rope and led Snowman back to a stall. There was more to horses than columns of numbers, the profits and losses in his farm ledger. There is one thing no horseman can ever put a price on, and that is heart.
10
The Horse Can Jump
St. James, Long Island, 1956
Harry’s kids celebrated their favorite’s return, playing with him and clambering up on his back to ride. Snowy never minded—not even when two-year-old Marty tried to climb up his tail. He was always gentle around children, taking care where to put his giant hooves, lowering his head to nuzzle their hands, standing patiently while being groomed. Harry chuckled at the spectacle of Marty hugging Snowy’s big leg, or the sight of one of the kids sitting on his back without a bridle or saddle. Harry himself had started sitting on horseback when he was two. That was the age when he started scampering up the manger to climb on board his own shaggy black pony. Even then, he could keep up with the older riders, jumping high obstacles by the time he was eight. Harry wanted his children to grow up just as he had, living and breathing horses. With Snowman, since the doctor had sold him back,