Just  a short note to say that my Internet is back up and running in Silverton Colorado.  In the next couple days I’ll post a run down of what has been going on. Also I have word that their may be a new series posted on THE PONY EXPRESSION soon.  As well as another Outdoors story.

Stay tuned.

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My internet is going to go offline sometime today. So thought I’d post one last Arizona post before my move to Colorado  tomorrow. Looks like I’m on schedule. Cleaning bathroom now. Outside work is done. Will begin loading truck soon. Then finish cleaning up the room. I can’t believe it – I am moving. Finally after so many years of indecision. I’m moving and will be closer to Heather and Malcolm…

…my family.

I heard from Kathy about Pro and he is settled into a boarding facility in Utah. The facility owner seems quite taken with him and sees the difference between a BLM Mustang and a Spanish Mustang.  That is what I loved about my particular SM’s you knew they were different. They exuded quality.  Pro definitely does all of that and then some.  I won’t stop worrying about him though until he is safe at Kathys home. When Pro left here he was sleek shiny and full of vigor. (In near show quality shape with hooves trimmed, shots,  wormed, and bathed with a new halter and fly mask). I expect him to be scarred up (from stud colt fights) , much thinner, and somewhat subdued and a tangled mess when he arrives at Kathy’s.  Kinda breaks my heart to be honest.  But she will put him back in tip top shape in no time.

Once I get to Colorado and get settled I’ll get back online to give an update.

See ya all back here soon!

S

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For all my friends and clients I feel a profound sense of Gratitude.  You all have shown me so much faith, love, commitment, and support.

This Thankful Thursday is dedicated to each of you.

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Another Dreaming Colorado Update…

High Line on the Durango & Silverton Gauge Railroad approaching Silverton. (Photo credit: Grosbier.com)

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CELT’S PROPHECY

Sire: The Spirit of Bear Paw ( Sangrea Real x Twitckwa)

Dam: Celt’s Kindlewood (Azul’s el Milagro al Asad x La Senorita de Madrid)

30 months old

Loaded up onto a six horse trailer at 5:30 pm June 20, 2009. What in April of 1996 came to be…  has now drifted on in the veins of the black young stallion.

It’s a tough day.

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We are very pleased to feature our 2nd Outdoorsman and Outdoorswoman Writers Series guest author Dawn Faught. With a camera as her constant companion the resulting photography punctuates her distinct and enjoyable writing style.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH

I never knew how much work goes into saddling a horse until I tried it at 10,000 ft.  when I experienced the pleasure and terror of a five-day pack trip in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Colorado with Bear Basin Outfitters. Since this is a “roughing it” type of vacation, we saddled and cared for our own horses, set up tents and generally helped around camp as much as we could. Roughing it also meant when you inquire into the nearest “facility” you were handed a shovel and roll of TP and pointed in the general direction of a clump of trees!

 The first morning out, this flatlander eagerly set out to brush and saddle my horse….now you could swear she must have been of draft horse stature since I had to take breaks between brushing each side, not to mention after hefting my saddle over her massively tall 14.3 hand body.  I glanced over towards my tent mate to see her in the same predicament….we promptly declared in one voice, “Altitude stinks” and sat down for a break to slow our labored breathing and pounding hearts.

 The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are about as rough and beautiful as I’ve ever seen. As part of the Rocky Mountain Range, they live up to their name with boulders ranging from baseball size to entire mountaintops and anything in between, and lots of them. The horses navigated through the tricky rolling deathtraps with great agility and finesse. Hiking past altitudes of 12,500 ft., by the way, is a feat I actually accomplished… but it wasn’t pretty. A high mountain lake inaccessible by horseback was our goal if that gives you any clue to the terrain. We unfortunately didn’t quite make it to our destination but I sure didn’t complain when that hailstorm and lightning came along and made us beat a hasty retreat back down the mountain. Going downhill is much easier than up as long as you keep your footing. My guide cautioned us, “If you kick a rock loose make sure you warn anyone below. Someone sent one tumbling last week and it’s still rolling.”

The pleasure of the ride came from sharing time with great new found friends who shared my love of horses and the pure splendor of the mountains. The magnitude of the 14,000 ft. peaks towering above us washed in brilliant sunrises each morning were as delightful as the tiniest of flowers blooming prolifically at its feet. Elusive elk and bounding deer found their movements frozen within my camera lens along with countless horses, trees and scenic views. Scat signs and the grunting noises of a black bear somewhere within the dense forest but never visualized kept us on our toes as we traveled past trees bearing their massive claw marks. 

The terror came as we scaled the passes along narrow trails through treacherous rock slides. The pass we scaled the last day was the worst, in part because it occurred shortly after riding past a tombstone for some poor chap dated 1913. Visions of just how that pioneer must have tumbled to his final resting point went crashing through my head as Dan the guide warned, “This ain’t no disco, ride as light as you can.”  For once, my camera sat idle as we traversed the crumbly switchbacks. Riders behind me were “the size of ants” on the trail far below. We were so high, even the marmot we saw was hugging a rock for safety on his high perch. I looked at Dan and he chuckled at my extremely wide-eyed ND Flatlander Scared You-Know-Whatless look.

Photo credit: Dawn Faught

That look and my terror were quickly exchanged for pleasure once again, along with a gasp of extremely thin air as we reached the top and enjoyed the splendor of the mountain valley and clear blue lake far below. I grabbed my camera and after vowing “these are pictures I’m never going to show my Mom,” started snapping photos of the stragglers working their way up This Ain’t No Disco Pass.

Enjoyed this story? Would you like more? For more Dawn Faught imagery be it written or visual take a journey to her website at:  www.rushridge.com

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I love Thankful Thursday because I really focus on what I have to be thankful for. I love Thankful Thursday because it has me thinking all week long on what I have to be thankful for. When things happen, good things, I immediately acknowledge them as something to grateful for. When the bad things happen I look for something that will emerge from the struggle to be grateful for.  The bad things make the good things ,all of them, much grander.

As long as we understand that to be thankful is an attitude altering experience and thus life changing and beneficial, we will seek out things to be thankful for resulting a life filled with grace and joy.

For more thankfulness please visit these sites.

Akal Ranch

Tired Dog Ranch

Enlightened Horsemanship Through Touch

Please feel free to join us by adding your Thankful Thursday blog posts to our list by leaving a comment here.

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Something for the Soul…  Prayer Song by Robbie Romero and Red Thunder

Aho

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RODEO GALS

I thought that looking at women in rodeos during the 1800′s would be a fun research project.  What I discovered was that rodeos as we know them didn’t really exist until around the early 1900′s. Rodeo type events started springing up around the 1880′s or so and became popular thanks to showman like CB Irwin and the Irwin Brothers Wild West Show and Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show where women would perform along side of men.  Women performed daring tricks, bull dogged and rode saddle broncs. Some showed off their fancy fire arm tricks and marks”man”ship as well.  Prior to that small events would be held on ranches where the sponsoring ranch’s hands would pit their abilities against neighboring ranch hands for a day of de-stressing.  Many women participated in these ranch rodeos riding bulls, roping, bull dogging, racing etc.  It seems that up until the 1900′s women did pretty much everything that men did in the early ranch rodeo events.

Before we go too far into rodeos and women I like to share this bit of information about cowboys from Cowboy Way.

The Term “Cowboy”

Up until the late 1800′s, the term “cowboy” was a rotten thing to call someone. During the American Revolution a “cowboy” (or “cow boy” or “cow-boy”) was a Loyalist who stole Patriot cows, often luring the cows into the brush to shoot them. As the new country of America expanded to the west the word “cowboy,” with a growing list of negative connotations, went along with it.

According to authors Joseph G. Rosa and Robin May in their book “Buffalo Bill and His Wild West, A Pictorial Biography” it was Buffalo Bill Cody who rehabilitated the word in the minds of the American public. In Buffalo Bill’s famous Wild West shows a “cowboy” was a man of bravery and honesty, often cast in roles during daring reenactments of wild west adventures as that of a hero. Flamboyantly dressed and displaying extraordinary riding and marksmanship skills, the cowboys of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West soon etched a new, much more positive meaning of the word “cowboy” into the minds of Americans.

The truth about women’s participation in rodeos was neatly tweaked to depict women as gentile rather than rugged tough rough abouts smoking a corn cob pipe while sporting a lariat or mending a fence.  More women than you may expect were of the stronger, capable and competitive nature having emerged out of the 1800′s experience and this showed up in many ranch events across the west.  From Cowgirl Smarts I found this.

Historians would have you believe that women didn’t rope steers or ride broncs until the 1900s, when in fact many women were competing informally against neighbors in local ranch rodeos in the 1800s. Records indicate that by 1887 Buffalo Bill was adding women to his Wild West shows as fast as he could scout the female talent. It seems the public had an appetite for feminine women performing daring western stunts.

From the Wild West shows, dozens of talented cowgirls went into professional rodeo and were frequently allowed to compete against men. Cowgirls excelled at all rodeo events until the late 1940s, when women’s events were cut in order to increase the purse for men.

Next I visited the Cowgirl Hall of Fame and to my disappointment I found nearly all the Honoraries had actually “rodeod” in the early 1900′s  although many were born in the 1800′s. I’m supposing that since rodeo’s were not officially organized until around 1904-06  that historians begin their research there.  I find this very sad as the many women that came before forming the foundation to the rodeo event have been forgotten in time.  The Cowgirl Hall of Fame is still a fascinating place to visit.  Discovered there are women who taught school, managed boarding houses, wrote books and other interesting life’s work while as a pastime and for some to win purses waged themselves against a steer, or a saddle bronc or death defying tricks aboard lightening fast horses upon thundering hooves. What was not documented it seems was the early pioneer women who ranched, broke out stock, and participated along side men in the ranch rodeo events and festivities.
One woman, Ollie Osborn was born into ranch life, performed in Wild West Shows and later rode broncs in the early rodeos.  I found Ollie by going to a source that I met on Twitter.  Shirley Morris of  The Lone Cowgirl blog is writing a book called “Oh You Cowgirl!”  We ended up speaking on the phone and to my delight she is a wealth of information on cowgirl life during the early years. Here Shirley speaks some about her projects…

“My project is a book, about halfway completed at this point, “Oh, You Cowgirl!” and an hour long documentary by the same name. At the present time, I’m working on a shorter version about the cowgirls who were important to the early Pendleton Round Up. Mabel Strickland, Ollie Osborn, Bonnie McCarroll, Fox Hastings, Prairie Rose Henderson, Lorena Trickey just to name a few. The shorter version will be premiered at the Pendleton Hall of Fame to honor the cowgirls of Pendleton.”

Shirley sent the following information about Ollie Osborn.

Ollie Osborn
1896 – 1989

After she had long since retired from the fast-paced, wild life of a rodeo and wild west show cowgirl, Ollie Osborn was asked if she thought  she could have beat the men in the saddle bronc contests, given the opportunity to ride by the same rules and for the same prizes. Ollie said,

“Well, I’m not a gonna say to that. I mighta some and some I mighta not but I think I’d hold my own with the best of ‘em.”

Ollie Osborn was born a ranchers daughter, in Union, Oregon in 1896. It was as a child on the ranch, she learned the skills of riding, bulldogging and roping she would later use to perform and compete as the first woman ever to attain the status of professional rodeo cowgirl and compete in rodeo’s across the country. Ollie performed or competed in wild west shows and rodeo from 1913 through 1932. Like many of the women who made the adjustment of rancher to rodeo performer, Ollie rode slick, without tying her stirrups (hobbled). Retiring from that life she returned to her ranch home in Union, Or. where she ranched several more years until poor health forced her retirement.

In 1982 she was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Herford, TX and will be honored this year as one of six cowgirls in a permanent cowgirl display in the Hall of Fame at Pendleton, OR.

Shirley tells us that this photo of Ollie Osborn “was taken in 1913 when she was perfoming with Irwin Bros. Wild West and Frontier Days Show. Ollie was one of the star performers with the show along with Prairie Rose, Florence La Due, Lone Star May, Fox Hastings and the Irwin girls, Pauline, Joella and Francis.”

Look at her (Ollie)!!!  She’s a whisp of a thing!!

Thank you Shirley Morris for your contribution to today’s Sunday Historathon – 1800′s post.

And that folks concludes today’s Sunday Historathon – 1800′s “Rodeo Gals”.  Amazing Cowgirls!   YEEE HAW!

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As always in today’s Thankful Thursday I look for the simplest of things and try to see even the adversity life has thrown at me as something to be thankful for. There is so much to be thankful for. It’s all in the perspective you adopt for yourself.  How you wish to see and live your life.

For more thankfulness try out Akal Ranch or Tired Dog Ranch or Enlightened Horsemanship Through Touch

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