Good Old Gremlin

After Gremlin was past age 10, I started letting my kids ride him, as he had finally settled down enough. He actually likes kids better than he does me, and has never tried to pitch a kid off. My daughter showed him as her first 4-H horse. He placed a blue at county fair one year and then took third place in the halter paint division at the Wyoming State Fair, and we were both pleased with that outcome.
He became quite a cow pony. Chasing cows was his thing and there weren't very many that got by him. Never could use a rope off him, though, due to a bad experience involving an elk and ropes when Gremlin was four. My ex decided to take Gremlin elk hunting that year, although he had a good, older rope horse. He said it would be "good" for Gremlin, so I consented. It was to be a family outing, our first (and last) hunting camping trip.
We went to the mountains in the area where my ex had his elk permit and set up camp. He went out the first morning and shot his elk up over a mountain from where we were camped. So he took my son and Gremlin back to the woods to retrieve the elk. My daughter and I were out gathering up some firewood around camp late that afternoon when we saw Gremlin flying down out of the hills on the dead run with ropes flapping in the breeze behind him. He ran on about a quarter mile past camp where he became entangled in some willows. We girls went to catch him. I asked the ex what had happened, and he said he had tied the elk to the saddle with the ropes, and Gremlin was supposed to drag it. The dead elk was not upsetting to him, but when he started to pull and the ropes began flapping around his hind legs, Gremlin went into orbit. He charged up the mountain until he wrapped the elk around a tree, breaking the ropes, freeing Gremlin from his burden, but not his fright, as the ropes continued to flap against his hindquarters.
Since it was too late that day to go back after the elk, and my ex was not in any frame of mind to do so, I talked him into waiting until the next day when we would all go. He started out the next day with his rifle, and I asked him why he was taking that, as he had already filled his tag, so he left it at camp and it's a good thing, or Gremlin would not have lived to be a geriatric horse. We led Gremlin back and forth across the dead elk and that didn't phase him. I suggested my ex get on Gremlin and let me hand him the rope, then he could dally the rope while having control over the horse and make him pull the elk.
Gremlin got a little nervous as I approached him with the rope, but I quickly handed it to the ex, he dallied, then it began to get western. My son and ex had pulled the elk carcass down the mountain into a little creek-bed. Gremlin began to pitch, and the ex flew off right into the creek, face down! Boy was he mad when he came up. He was talking through gritted teeth when he said, "That horse is going to pull this elk if it's the last thing he does!" (Good thing I made him leave off the gun.) So we earred Gremlin down while he hooked the elk back to the empty saddle, then let him go. He took off like a rocket again and would run for all he was worth until the elk got snagged on something, then he would stand and blow until we caught up with him to unhook the elk, and the process would start all over. He ran on past camp until he got caught in the willow thicket again. By that time, the elk was flapping in the breeze behind him. Only got about 50 pounds of meat off that elk, hamburger, already ground, and it was rancid.
I tried everything I knew to get that pony over the trauma of that day, but to this day, if you take down a rope on Gremlin, you'd better be hanging on. Anything else involving being a cow horse, though, he's the greatest. Several of the Cheyenne neighbor kids learned to ride on him after I moved to Cheyenne, and they all loved him.