Stompin Broncs with Sturdy

I sure do miss old Sturdy. He and I used to ride together and break colts together. He had a lot of knowledge about horses, although he did things the old-fashioned way. When they didn't behave in the ways he wanted them to, he took to them.
He would always train his saddle horses to jump up in the back of the pickup through the open tailgate and stock rack, flat footed off the ground. No backing up to bank for this old cowboy. He'd give them a few passes at it and if they balked, he'd get out his buggy whip. Pretty soon, they were down right glad to bail in the back of that truck, and would do it anywhere.
I was having trouble with Gremlin after the infamous elk-hunting incident I wrote about in an earlier blog. He had managed to buck me off twice in the space of an hour one day because I got dumb and put the wrong size hackamore on him. I had been working with another horse that had a larger head than Gremlin using the same hackamore. I had let it out for her, and then forgot to take it back up for him. The bosal went way down on the end of his nose, where it didn't cause him any discomfort, so he put his head down and bucked me off. Still not realizing the headstall was too large, I gathered him up and got right back on. He immediately bogged his head and tossed me off again. That time, I was mad when I got up and I went over and grabbed the reins of the hackamore and jerked on them to tell him how mad I was. When I did that, the bosal flipped up from under his jaw and I saw what was causing the problem. Well, by then he thought he was pretty hot stuff and when I went to get back on, after I'd shortened the headstall, he wouldn't let me. He just kept circling and trying to buck as I got on. Being the hardheaded person that I am, I did manage to get back on to ride him back to the barn and put him up.
I went down to the Pronghorn to nurse my wounds and try to figure out what to do. Sturdy was there, so I told him my troubles. He was already three sheets to the wind, and he said, "Well, bring him out. We'll show him, if he wants to buck, what happens."
I don't think Sturdy even remembered telling me to bring him out, but I took him up on it bright and early the next morning. Sturdy had a slightly younger man staying with him at the time, but he had gotten up and gone to work already. Sturdy was nursing some coffee when I got there. He invited me in. "I brought that horse," I said.
He stuttered a little and then said, "Well, John's not here. He had to go to work."
"I know," I said, "but you told me to bring him out and you'd straighten him out for me."
"Oh, well," Sturdy nodded, "we'll see about that."
So we went to the corral and I unloaded Gremlin. Sturdy had some four-way hobbles that he went to get. He put them on Gremlin, who proceeded to have a little fit about them. We let him go around in the hobbles for a while until he decided he could, then Sturdy gathered him up and motioned me to get on.
"Are you going to scrape me up out of this corral when he bucks me off?" I asked.
"Well, if you think he's gonna do that," Sturdy said boldly, "I'LL ride him." So he got on. Gremlin didn't like it much, but he didn't try to buck with Sturdy, who rode him around the corral a while with the hobbles on. When he was going around there pretty good, Sturdy had me very carefully take the hobbles off, then continued to trot and lope him around the corral. When he had a little sweat breaking, Sturdy got off and told me, "Now you get on."
I walked up to Gremlin and took the reins in one hand and the stirrup in the other, but when I went to put my foot in the stirrup, he gave a little mean squeal and struck out with a front foot. He was warning me not to get on him. Sturdy stepped up, yelled at Gremlin, and held him while I got on. I rode him around the corral just like Sturdy had, until he kind of settled down. Then I dismounted and mounted several times.
Sturdy was a storyteller. We used to call them Sturdy stories. Well, he sure liked to tell that story. He was so proud that he'd helped me tame my renegade, and I was too. But the story got bigger every time he told it. Pretty soon word got around that Gremlin was cow-kicking the stirrup right out of my hand when I went to get on, and Sturdy stepped in there and kicked him a good one right in the belly. Oh well, it was his story, I let him tell it however he wanted to. I was just glad to have his help to get a handle on my little renegade again.
All the guys up here kept telling me I'd better sell Gremlin--that he was going to hurt me. Well, he did hurt me a few times, but I'm still here and so is he, 24 years and counting.