OUR BELOVED PETS WRITING COMPETITION
Feisty-Time Tanga, My Palomino Horse
Not every girl gets her dream, but I did with Tanga
When I was nine, my parents nearly had to give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after announcing we were getting a horse. Ever since I’d had a pulse, I’d been a horse girl — first My Little Ponies, then progressing to plastic show horses, exquisite clay model horses, and countless book series about Triple Crown winners and wild mustangs.
Since she was to be “my” horse, I got to accompany my parents to the ranch that had advertised the six-year-old palomino Quarter Horse mare, “Barbie Doll.”
Her owner was selling his horse because he’d wanted her to be a steer wrestling horse at rodeos. Barbie Doll didn’t work out because she was too slow out of the gate to allow her riders to drop down upon the speedy steers. They needed to twist the steers’ heads to flip them over and drop them to the ground. (Are rodeos barbaric? You be the judge.)
“She has the speed,” the owner said grumpily. “She’s just lazy.”
Barbie Doll was exquisite, and soon, she was ours. That name, though, had to go. She had a mischievous light in her eyes and I could tell she was no Barbie. I picked Tanga, short for tangerine.
We took Tanga to the rodeo arena near our tiny Idaho town so I could ride. I was ecstatic. The high school girl who’d given me riding lessons was a barrel racer, and I was going to compete in barrel racing one day, too! I would be one of those flashy women leaning over their saddle horns, legs pumping, hair flying, guiding my horse around three barrels under the night lights as dirt flew up and the crowds cheered me in my tight blue jeans.
Things went south quickly. I didn’t even complete one lap around that rodeo arena, guiding Tanga at a comfortable pace, when suddenly she bolted out of the arena gates toward the outer boundaries of town like a prize thoroughbred gunning for the Kentucky Derby — me still attached!
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I screamed, tugging on the reins.
Tanga’s modus operandi was disobedience, so as soon as I lost my voice, she primly turned and took me back. My parents and I realized that she had spooked when she went past that steer wrestling gate, afraid we were going to force her to sprint out of it faster than she cared to run. Therefore, she escaped by galloping at full speed. Real good, Tanga.
That evening was our first inkling that Tanga did things her own way. She refused to get into the horse trailer after having stepped into it with no problem before, and my dad ended up having to ride her six miles home in the dead of night.
“She’s feisty,” said the vet on a check-up visit, “but horses mellow out by the time they’re ten years old.”
Ten years old. That meant we had four years to go.
On our little acre of land sat the run-down farmhouse with peeling white paint that my parents had bought for $20,000. It had a white picket fence, and beyond, a small paddock that my dad built for Tanga. There I’d ride her around garbage cans set up in a cloverleaf pattern for barrel racing practice.
We never made it faster than a walking pace, because that’s as quick as I could get her to go. I’d squeeze her sides and cluck to her in encouragement. She’d pick it up for a few strides, barely, then settle back in as if to say, that was good enough, right?
When my parents and I were home, we’d string a homemade wire gate across the entrance of the driveway so Tanga could come out of her paddock and wander around the property, grazing on the lush green grass in our yard. She especially loved to relax in the shade on the front porch, itching herself on the side of the house.
One day my dad and I were sitting in the living room with the shades drawn, watching TV, when we were startled out of our minds by a thunderous crash. Tanga, standing just outside, had itched her butt on the outer glass of the screen door, shattering it into a million pieces.
Nothing could come between Tanga and her bodily pleasures — an adage that came doubly true when she got herself a boyfriend.
Things got interesting when Tanga was in heat. (A horse is “in heat” when she is ready to conceive.) Our drooping driveway gate wasn’t very secure, and down the road at our next door neighbor’s house lived a virile stallion who would call to Tanga at her time of the month.
Either he would escape, or she would. Often she’d make short work of the wire gate and trot on down to the neighbor’s house, where the ancient farmer would put a halter on her, call us up, and wait for one of my parents to come and walk her back down the road.
It was more of an event when the stallion came galloping down for a visit. In all his muscle and frightening bulk, he’d march up our driveway and up to the gate of Tanga’s paddock, and unabashedly try to mate with her! I remember one night in particular when the stallion’s owner, my dad, and some other men were out there in the dark, trying to get the stallion away.
It’s dangerous to approach a horny stallion. He can knock you over in one stroke, trample you, and bash your brains in without even realizing it. So there he was on full, erect display with my Tanga backing right up to the gate, her tail raised and to the side so he’d have plenty of room.
The lovebirds bumped against the gate again and again as they tried to make contact. All I could think about was how horrible it was. If Tanga got pregnant against her will (well, against ours; clearly she was willing), her health and life could be at stake.
At last, someone caught the stallion and with great effort, several people led him away. Finally I could breathe again.
The next year, we moved to western Montana, away from the sagebrush scrubland of southeastern Idaho. Here I found green farmland and lush pine forests. I loved the change in landscape.
Tanga would have, too, if all she’d had to do was lounge in her pasture, which was a definite upgrade — five acres with a brand-new shed and vistas across the valley.
But of course, we, her pesky owners, had to take her on trail rides into the mountains, enjoying her, as horse owners are wont to do.
Soon after we moved, my parents decided to try a road not a few hundred yards from our house that went straight up the hill behind us, cresting at a small lake on top. By the looks of it, the ride would take about an hour, but as always with travel estimates, the journey took much longer.
The day was bright and sunny, the hill long and steep. All four of us were sweaty, and you think it was bad for the humans taking turns walking?
Try having a saddle on your back.
Of course it would be my turn riding when Tanga decided enough was enough and she wasn’t going to wear that saddle any more. We’d just reached a grove of spindly, needle-less pine trees when she tried to scrape me off on one of their trunks. When I yelped in displeasure but stayed aboard, she tried on the next tree, and the next.
Proud of my horsemanship as Tanga shook her head and walked on — I’d done it, I’d mastered the test! — I suddenly felt myself sinking. I had just enough time to leap out of the saddle and launch myself away before Tanga rolled over, grunting, making her own dust bath like a zebra in the Serengeti. She was trying to get that sweaty saddle off.
As it turned out, Tanga did mellow right at age ten; perhaps not because of her age, but because she became a mother. That’s right, my parents decided to add another member to our horse family — only this time conceived not by a runaway stallion but at a proper breeding facility.
Tanga’s daughter was a golden palomino just like her. Oh, I had big dreams for Penny! Show pony, demonstration horse at the county fair, heck, maybe even a barrel racer. Will I never learn my lesson?
Penny showed her true colors at two weeks old, kicking me so hard in the thigh that half my leg was bruised for weeks. Through the years that followed she’s taken chunks out of shoulders and hips, threatened kicks (and sometimes landed them), and dramatically displayed petulant moods.
I’d like to haul that old Idaho vet up here and give him a talking to. Our much-loved Penny turns twenty-four this week, on May 19, and she’s just as feisty as ever.
Thanks for reading! There have been so many beautiful entries in The Narrative Arc’s “Our Beloved Pets Writing Competition” so far. I absolutely loved Ellen Eastwood’s story about her cat, Friday:
— Erie Astin
