When I was a kid, we had a paint horse we called Peppy. He was a half brother to both Kokomo and Apache, but he had inherited much more of the Shetland attitude than the other two. He was a naughty pony.
My oldest sister, Kandra, trained him, and as I recall he behaved very well for her. But when my middle sister Kellie started riding him at about age eight, Peppy treated her horribly. I remember we were gathering cattle out of the School Section pasture, and Peppy ran away with her, stopped suddenly when he came up to a barbed wire fence, and threw her off into it. I remember she got right back on him and rode him the rest of the day without too much trouble, but we were all shocked.
Another incident with Peppy we never told our parents about was the time Kellie and I went out with a bucket and picked a bunch of new rye grass to feed the horses. In the springtime, wild rye was the first green thing to come up, and it was sweet, tender, and a rich green that the horses loved. Kellie and I picked a big bucket of it, and carried it up on The Hill to feed the geldings. We were walking among them, giving each a big handful, when Peppy charged and knocked Kellie down with his shoulder, knocked off her glasses, and stood at the fallen bucket eating all of the green grass in it himself. We had a healthy respect for his orneriness after that.
Left to right: A friend Daniel on Smokey, my sister Kellie on Kokomo, our cousin Jodi on Apache, my sister Kandra on Spider, and myself on Peppy, Summer 1987.
I started riding Peppy when Kellie got her own colt to train, and by that time he had mellowed out quite a bit. Peppy had a big heart, and would try harder than any of our other horses. I always said that if he had the body of a thoroughbred, he would have been a first-class racehorse. Peppy loved to run, and he loved to race, but his short little legs really couldn’t compete against a taller horse. My sister and I would often ride around bareback on Peppy and Kokomo, and if we came to a nice uphill stretch, one of us would shout out, “To the top of the hill!” and we would be off, racing wildly to the hilltop’s peak. Peppy always did his best to win, he was a game little horse.
My youngest brother, Kris, claimed Peppy as his horse when he was only about three years old. One day when we older kids were all at school, Dad needed help moving some cattle, and so Mom and Kris went to help. Mom loves to tell the story of how Kris was determined to ride Peppy by himself, so she put him on bareback and let them go along. She said that every time Peppy would start to jog, my little brother would start to bounce, and would squeal, “Pepp-eee! Pepp-eee!”
One time Dad had some cattle work to do, and he had already ridden out to get started, and told me to saddle Peppy and come along to help him. My brother Kris was about four years old, and was indignant that he wasn’t asked to go along. He was yelling at me and crying, saying I couldn’t take Peppy. I was trying to get a halter on poor Peppy, but Kris wrapped both arms around Peppy’s front leg and wouldn’t let me lead him to the barn. Peppy just reached down and nipped Kris on the shoulder, as if to say, “Enough of this nonsense!” And Kris went crying to the house, his feelings hurt worse than anything else.
A few years later, we were on a cattle drive, and Kris, now about five years old, got too warm and decided to take off his jacket. He got one arm out of its sleeve, but the jacket flopped over on one side and before he could get the other arm out of it, Peppy shied sideways, away from the flopping jacket. It kept flapping against his shoulder, so Peppy kept spinning away from it, and pretty quick he was doing a reining horse spin out there with my little five year old brother! My dad rode his horse up to help out, but Peppy was always shy of adults and difficult to catch unless you were a kid, so he wouldn’t let Dad get close enough to help. Eventually Kris got him stopped and dismounted to finish taking off his jacket, but ol’ Peppy had given him quite a ride.
Peppy was a horse who knew what you were saying. We loved to tease him, and he would get all mad and sulky. For instance, my brother would be riding along behind a herd of cattle on Peppy, and Kandra would ride past and say, “P-p-p-pony!” at him, and Peppy’s eyes would get all sad and dark, and he would lower his head and put his ears back and sulk. In later years, when we would come home from school, we would see Peppy up on The Hill grazing, and would shout, “P-p-p-pony!” and he would whinny shrilly back at us.
We all learned to ride on Peppy, and then one year he foundered. It was winter and we were feeding the ranch geldings quite a bit of corn and alfalfa hay to keep their weight up during the cold weather. We usually would pour out their corn into about ten different feed pans, and then pitch piles of hay out into their corral while they were eating their corn. Well, the other geldings liked that alfalfa hay so well that they all left their feed pans and went over to the hay. Peppy went around to all the feed pans and ate all of the corn by himself and foundered from it. His feet grew out after awhile, and we were able to trim him up pretty good, and he got over it and didn’t limp anymore.
As we got older, we all wanted to be training colts and riding our own horses, and Peppy often got left behind as a result. My dad got on this kick of thinking that if no one else would ride Peppy then he would—after all, a ranch horse should earn his keep! Poor little Peppy, he did his best, but Dad was a much heavier rider than he had ever carried, and Dad also did much more work horseback than we kids did. So Peppy would be sweating and trying so hard, and so proud of himself to be carrying “the boss”, and we kids would be teasing him, making him sulky. He was about 14 hands, but as heavy as the other horses, he was stocky and a very easy keeper. His round belly and little white spot at the top of his rump made him the cutest little Quarter-Arab-Shetland pony there ever was!
We sold Peppy to a neighbor girl when I was in high school. We heard later that he had been sold to a guest ranch. I like to think that he was put out to pasture where he could spend his older years in lazy bliss. Peppy was a little horse with a huge heart, and he played a big role in each of our lives.
