Cowboy Trade

 We washed Hobbs again and before he could re-matt his silvery tail and gleaming dapples, he was loaded back into the trailer with his favorite diversion--hay, and headed for the sales. There are apparently, a lot of horse-men who grew up on Long Island or Rhode Island, or Queens but call themselves Cowboy. They talk cowboy, wear cowboy hats and ride swaggering, muscle bound cow ponies, although, apparently, the closest the ponies get to a cow, is a barrel. We hoped one of them would see Hobbs' potential and snap him up.

Our first stop was at a dusty local rancho/riding stable. Hobbs backed out of the trailer and we tried to pretend casually that we had no worries about his snatching the lead rope to dash off and join the barrel racing competition happening in the back field. The Cowboy cantered up on his beautiful steed, threw the reins to the ground, took one look at Hobbs  and shook his head. "Worthless," he meanly said, and cantered off. Worthless! This fine figure of a horse--worthless? We managed to convince Hobbs to get back in the trailer, no mean feat, and drove on.

Next stop, over the border--to Connecticut and Cowboy 2. This one had a lovely sales barn with green, green fields, a nice little ring and a dirt floor thirty stall stable with numbers over each stall. Hobbs nearly tipped the trailer over on its side when he started climbing to get out through the window--and on to Heather, in his eagerness to join the crowd. Heather  shot me the kind of look that said, we are not putting him back in.

The Cowboy, this one well on in years and a bit wider in the paunch but with a very nice cowboy hat and cowboy twang, even though we were in Connecticut, grabbed Hobbs and looked in his mouth. I realized we had not, ourselves, looked in Hobbs' mouth (which is how you tell how old a horse is--kind of like counting the rings of a tree--you count the horse's teeth and look for 'signs').  In fact even the thought of looking at Hobbs' teeth was a little terrifying.

The cowboy--an expert on everything, and old world on the dumbness of women, declared Hobbs to be: all Percheron (not a total surprise to us at this point) and  not more than two years old. Two? This giant?  A big baby?

He whistled for one of his 'hands' who disappeared Hobbs into a stall, and tied  him tightly to a ring in the  wall.  Hobbs bellowed. I felt weepy. Heather went in to talk deal with the Cowboy and came out shaking her head-the horse was worthless. The Cowboy would only offer a decent price if it was on a new horse. Suddenly this sounded a lot like trading in a Toyota.