One thing I love about horses is their individual personalities. Just as every person in the world has his own characteristics, every horse is wired differently. And just like every good group of friends has a goofball in it, the horse bunch I grew up with had its own class clown, Gunner. Gunner was my brother Kevin’s horse, and I often say that horses can take on the persona of their owner or the one who rides them the most. It seemed to be that way for Gunner, because Kevin was the funny one in our family—and his horse was also a cut-up.
Gunner was born on April 28th to Sporty Lana Lee, aka. Blondie, and our bay AQHA stallion, Savannah Chief, aka. Joey. This dun gelding was named The Chiefs Gunpoudre and we worried that his personality might be as explosive as his name. After all, he was born on April 28th.
Okay, April 28th was a bad day in our family. My sister Kandra broke her arm on April 28th when she was eleven, and in subsequent years, we seemed to have trouble every time that day came around. Big trouble. One year we were branding calves, and getting them all into the corral and a big red cow with a heartshaped white patch on her face was fighting mad and chasing us out of concern to protect her newborn calf. She chased me through the barbed wire fence, and then she charged my mom! Thankfully, she didn’t tromple us, but we just knew it was because we had bothered her on the wrong day.
Anyway, Gunner was a big three year old before we got around to training him, but my sister Kandra started him out, and he did very well for her. I’m not sure when my younger brother Kevin started riding him, but somehow the two just clicked, and Gunner became Kevin’s horse. Gunner did not have the best conformation—a long barrel and short hip and shoulders—and it affected his movement considerably. He seemed to shuffle from side to side more than he shuffled forward. He was very smooth to ride bareback, but he had such a short stride and side-to-side movement that my dad could hardly tolerate riding him. I remember when Kevin was in high school and nearing college age, Dad had put Gunner up for sale. Some guys came out to look through Dad’s horses, and we were trying to get them to buy Gunner. But my dad told them, as we were showing Gunner to them, “I never did like this horse.” I couldn’t believe my ears! Why would he say that to a potential buyer? Of course, they declined and went on their way, and Gunner stayed with us several more years.
It was a good thing though, because Gunner was so enjoyable. He was one of our bigger geldings, and was right up next to the boss horse, Kokomo, in the pecking order. We kept our riding geldings in a small pasture just over the hill from our house, and when there was cattle work to be done, one of us kids would run out on foot with a bridle, catch up a horse, and drive all the other horses in. We soon found it necessary to also take a long whip along, because Gunner liked to kick at your horse if you came up to drive him. My horse Rudy was good at dodging him, because Rudy was lowest on the pecking order and had suffered much abuse from Gunner, so he was quick to move back out of respect. I always figured if I could stay on when Rudy dodged, I would be safe from getting kicked, because Rudy would never allow Gunner to get a kick in. I often wished I had taken a camera on those early-morning horse roundups…you always took them at a dead run (if you let them walk, they would stop or move around behind you and all split up and go fifteen different directions—running them kept them in a bunch) and they would fly down the steep gully towards the ranch buildings in a swirl of dust, and I’m sure the scene looked like a Marlboro advertisement. At least that’s the way I still picture it in my mind….except for a ponytailed girl riding bareback cracking a whip instead of the leatherfaced man with cigarette in his lips, of course.
Another of Gunner’s fortes was playing games. Kevin could get him to do the orneriest things! Often after supper on those long summer days that we never wanted to end, we would all go grab a horse, jump on bareback and ride down the road for a “fun ride” at dusk. Riding four abreast with our youngest sister and the dog trailing along behind, Kevin would suddenly rein his horse over towards ours and say, “Git ’em, Gunner!” And his horse would actually lay his ears back and reach over and nip our horse’s face or neck! That made our horse spook and shy backwards, upsetting our nice bareback ride and making us shriek and giggle. Kevin would also play Bumper Cars on Gunner, because the horse would back up at lightning speed and ram our horses with his behind! We were lucky we never got kicked or hurt with the stunts we pulled.
Another crazy episode involving Gunner happened one day when we kids just had too much time on our hands. We had fed the horses in their separate feed pans in the corral, and were just goofing around kicking manure at each other and being silly. My brother Kevin picked up an old tire that was lying over by the fence, and said, “Watch this.” And he started it rolling at a pretty good clip right up behind Gunner. Gunner had his attention on the grain in his pan, and didn’t see the tire coming until it touched his hocks. He kicked that tire with both hind feet, and it flew about thirty yards before it hit the ground, bounced high again, and rolled another fifty yards! We burst into laughter, but were sobered by the thought of what could happen to one of us if we walked up behind Gunner unannounced. Gunner never kicked anyone intentionally, but one day as my brother was grooming him in the barn, he spooked at a sound from nowhere and kicked hard behind him and left a deep imprint in the wooden post of the stall. I am sure that Gunner’s track is still there to this day.
And so Gunner’s track is still on our hearts. He was sometimes chipper, sometimes irritable, sometimes a show-off, sometimes a clown. But he was a great ranch horse and brought so much humor into the daily work that we couldn’t help but love him. I think Dad sold him a few years ago to a family with a young girl who wanted to learn to ride. Gunner was one of our most patient horses for beginner riders, so I like to think he brightened that girl’s life and is still somewhere out there being his goofy self.
