HORSE OF MY DREAMS

For most of you guys, this is the same story you've heard variations of over and over. However, I just realized that there are people who know me who have never heard this story. This is for one of those that asked for it.
It was my second day at work at the boy scout horse camp. Children had not arrived yet, and this was the week of preparation for the upcoming summer. Every day, the staff was broken into work teams who worked on different areas of the camp.
This day, my boss, the head wrangler Wesley, set me off to the barn to hold the horses for the farrier. He was trimming and shoeing all the forty horses in the barn and had not yet got started. I grabbed a halter and looked around for the first horse to grab.
I saw a striking bay in the second to last stall on the left. The stalls were short with simple bars diving them, so I could see the horses' whole bodies. I knew he was second in the pecking order from which stall he was in. Horses always have a pecking order, and often line up according to it for stall and food access situations. The first horse was a large grey gelding that was easily the best horse in the barn, and the biggest. This bay was very nicely built, too, and about four inches shorter. His coat was gorgeous and shiny, and he quivered and danced in his stall.
I haltered him and brought him over to the farrier, but the minute the man tried to lift his hoof, he started rearing and snorting. The more the man tried to get close to him, the more he danced. If the farrier managed to get a hold on his hoof, the horse would try to pull away and rear up, going backwards at the same time, with the whites of his eyes rolling.
"I'm not touching that one without drugs," he said.
The next day, the farrier had finished working on all four feet of the forty head..except three, which including the mules (Willie and Waylon) and that bay gelding, who as I can to find out, was called "Bullseye", after a brand on his left hip. These three had to be loaded in the trailer and taken to the vet's office for tranquilizers.
The mules loaded easily. The farrier went off to the vet's to work on them. The bay, however, wanted nothing to do with the trailer. For three hours, the men worked on him, trying various methods to get him in the trailer. He came within a foot of it at one point, then reared up, right when they were trying to push him, and he sliced his neck on the corner of the stock trailer. Blood dripped down his neck and sweat covered his haunches as he fought the men.
"That horse is crazy, " everyone muttered under their breath as we watched the show. The guys who worked there before said he had never been able to be ridden in the two years he had been at the camp. The rangers got on him, but he spooked, threw his rider, and went running back to the barn, every time.
Finally, old C.E., the ancient cowboy who ran the place all year long, rose up from his spot under a shady tree. He had been resting and trying to take it easy, as he had some kind of terminal lung condition, but at this point, he started yelling at the horse.
"Get in the damn trailer!" he yelled, over and over, and began walking over with his lariat. He smacked the horse on the rear with the stiff rope, over and over, leaving welts along his flanks. That failed to impress the horse, who finally only agreed to enter the trailer when Wesley tied his lead to his saddlehorn and let him follow his own horse in.
The next day, when the farrier came to get paid, he expressed surprise over the events of the previous evening.
"That's the first time I ever had to shoe a horse while he was upside down and sleeping," he explained. He told us that the mules simmered down nicely with their drugs, but this one still fought, even with the drugs. The vet kept giving him more and more until finally he dropped down, totally out, and the shoer was able to work on him at last.
That first two weeks, Wesley had asked Joanna to work with him, as she had worked for Wesley in the past. However, she was too scared of him. She only managed to get a bridle on him once, as he flipped backwards whenever she tried it. That one time, when she took him out to the ring and began to mount up, he shied away from her and she got spooked.
One afternoon, he and I were leaning over the fence, watching the herd come in for an evening watering, and he turned to me and said, "You know, I've been watching you ride the past couple of weeks. Tell ya what, see that horse over there?" He gestured to Bullseye. "He's your horse for the summer. No one rides him but you, unless you say so. No one works with him, unless you ask them to. He's yours. See what you can do."
The next day, I started working with him, and discovered a few things very quickly. He was willing to please, as long as you took things slow. The minute you tried to force him, he would freak out. I got his bridle on the first time just by asking nicely, and that is how we approached everything. And then Wesley set an impossible goal, and told me he wanted me to ride him the next night as an outrider for the chow wagon. This was a position of much risk and little safety. I would have to cross roads and ride solo at a fast pace, and mount and dismount three times to open and close gates. I could not fail. I could not get thrown. I would be carrying a radio and providing an escort for the mules over the five mile stretch of hill country terrain, so I had to stay seated and in control.
My first ride on Bullseye, we cantered along the stretch of grass bordering the camp road, riding up ahead and stopping traffic for the mule wagon to come by. He tried to throw me twice that night. I laughed at him. We made it through all our tests just fine.
The entire next week, he had a bucking fit twice every evening during our ride. I always laughed and never came off. The following week, he tried once every night. After that, he kind of gave up. I rode him every day that summer, and we became more bonded through our many little trials. Once, a deer bolted right in front of him, and he wanted to spook and run off, but I held him tight and calmed him down. We got lost in the thicket together and only made it out by working as a team. Little incidents like that.
At the end of the day, he was the horse that wouldn't go away. I always untacked him first, then went around untacking the other horses. Each of us wranglers had to untack at least five horses to do our fair share. After he pulled the saddles and bridles off, they were free to leave for the pasture, but Bullseye wouldn't leave. Instead, he followed behind me as I worked with the other horses, rubbing his forehead on my back and resting his chin on my shoulder. This was sometimes annoying but I also found it endearing.
At the end of the summer, I didn't want to part with him. I offered Wesley, and the boy scouts, $1000 for him, and eventually they complied (after some other conditions were met).
It took six months or more before the herd passed the three negative Coggins tests that were required before the swamp fever ban could be lifted. (We had to put down three horses due to EIA when the summer started, and so blood tests were taking every two months.) Finally, just after Spring Break, Wesley brought him three hours northeast to a barn in College Station, loaded again in the stock trailer, since he could not be loaded in the two horse trailer.
"This horse of yours," said Wesley in greeting, "is a butthead. It took four hours to get him in the trailer. He got away and went galloping out on to the property (some two thousand acres), and I had to get on Bob and rope him, then lead him in like last time."
"Oh, and he hasn't been touched since you left."
More on the next phase of our life together another time.