How Gus Came to Alpine

Growing up, my dad would talk from time to time about buying some land and having horses on it. Being a fully suburban kid for whom “horseback riding” meant trying not to step in poop or fall off, I didn’t take him seriously. And I certainly didn’t share in his dream.

A few years after we moved to Texas, it seemed he might actually do it. On many weekends, he would take the whole family to check out potential sites for “the ranch”. We’d drive west of Fort Worth, stop at one place, walk around, check out the barn, and I would find a place to go to the bathroom. As many of the prospective “ranches” did not have any actual house on the property, this turned out to be rather difficult and thus traumatic for a young girl with a small bladder who had at least 3 more similar stops to look forward to before heading home. I remember trying to “wander off” to find a place out in the scrub oak and tall grass to relieve myself but being stopped by Mom who was afraid I’d embarrass the family in front of the realtor.

But I digress.

These weekend trips, interlaced with visits to livestock shows at the Fort Worth Stockyards, went on long enough that we kids never did think Dad would actually buy anything. But we again hoped too soon. He did, indeed, buy “the ranch”. Which is a bit of a misnomer, since there wasn’t really anything there. A cattle guard, some hills, lots of grass and scrub oak, and two muddy ponds. And now that he had the ranch, the frequency of weekend trips only increased. These visits for me consisted of helping trim huge dead branches off the trees, walking around, and generally trying to do whatever was necessary to get to go home as soon as possible. Obviously, these were highlights of my formative years. Somehow, my dad’s progeny did not quite catch his vision of the awesomeness of this new investment, which was probably highly disappointing to him, in retrospect.

I remember one time we went out to the ranch with some friends in our ward. We had brought a four wheeler and a couple of dirt bikes. For some reason I thought I was qualified to ride the dirt bike around the property. It was pretty fun, right up until I drove straight into one of the two ponds. I learned several things about dirt bikes that day, post hoc unfortunately:

Being submerged in freezing cold water is very detrimental to dirt bike engines,
dirt bikes are actually heavier in the water when their tires are stuck in the bottom of the pond, and most importantly,
I hate dirt bikes.

But again, I digress.

What I really wanted to tell you about is Gus.

We never did build anything or buy any animals to plenish this ranch land in Texas. But when my parents moved into their new house in Alpine, my dad’s dream finally did come to fruition: they bought two horses and built a pen in the back yard. The first two horses were named Jack and George. Jack was very old but reliable and easy to manage. George was unfortunately ill tempered, so he got the boot (no pun intended) shortly and was replaced by Jill. Meanwhile, Jack was still very old and getting older quickly. In fact, he now eats so slowly that he can’t get his fill before Jill has finished off all of the alfalfa. Let that be a lesson to all of you.

So, my dad again started scouting every horse auction and website for his next steed. And he found it—a beautiful Palomino, not yet broken with an excellent pedigree. His name was Gus. And he lived in central Oregon.

My parents decided to go and purchase their equine prize (my mom is endlessly supportive and was just as excited as my dad) over the 3 day weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Upon arriving at their destination, they discovered that this gorgeous horse was a small (but sprightly, mind you) PONY! That’s right, one of those darling but not-quite-full-grown horses that are just right for precocious children. Somehow, in the interchanges between Dad and Gus’s owner, the actual size of the horse was never specified. After driving all that way, Dad bought him anyway. And they got stuck in Donner’s Pass on the way home with no snow tires or chains.

And now Gus is at “horse training school” and apparently at the top of his class.

That’s all.