On the fourth day of Karl Lentini’s cattle herding vacation, Karl rides “Yellow.”
My Time at Double Circle Ranch
by Karl Lentini
Day 4: Wednesday Sept. 8 2010
Herding Cattle on the Double Circle Ranch
Rode Yellow today. He got his name from everybody saying, “Go get that yellow horse.” He’s smaller and thinner than Odie and generally more responsive, or perhaps my horsemanship was getting better. Very comfortable to sit on.
Yellow tends to lag behind other horses and I found myself continuously making him catch up. After a day of this I think he got the message as he would catch up on his own without me prompting him. How’s that for horse sense. I later learn that Yellow might have security issues. I guess he’s not the dominant male in the herd.
No matter where we went Yellow would manage to get right behind Flash, the horse Wilma was riding. But when we rode back to the barn at the end of the day, Yellow rode out ahead of Flash. Go figure.
Yellow has a curious way of communicating with his rider. As I was about to lead him down one particularly steep hill, he looked at me like, “What do you think you’re doing?”
I’m no expert, but I can see that when you’re moving cattle you sometimes have to stop your horse from getting too close, lest you spook the cattle. And I noticed that every time I stopped Yellow from walking into a steer, he would angle his head towards me as if to say “Can we go now…? How about now?”
At one point Yellow turned his head back and bit the tip of my right boot. Don’t know what that was about.
Learning some ranching terms: dirt bank, water gap, bluffs, flats, poky, bucky, spooky, draft horse, gelding, stallion, stud, drive bys, a finished horse, starting a horse, withers, lope, martingale.
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