Horses like tended to get locked in a stall while the others got fed. Gotta feed them first or they start taking it out on others, it's a herd alpha dominance thing. 

Dad bought Banjo at a roundup auction in Utah, he'd taken to being "broken" as a roundup cutting horse and went on to be really good at everything. Unfortunately he was only 14,2 high so the cowboys didn't want him in their strings and buyers wanted big quarter horses, paints or pintos so he was last string destined for the dog food herd. 

Dad got him for less than $100 and brought him home with the string the club bought. He figured Banjo was just right for me, short, wide great lines and really strong but it was how he looked at people that sold Dad. 

Being so low, short and wide with all the muscle he packed gave him all kinds of leverage to cut and a shoulder bump would bounce much larger horses out of his way. He came out of a chute like he was fired out of a gun. PROVIDED you were in the header's position, if  you were healing he'd plant his nose just behind the header and show me a perfect throw. Took me a while to learn to rope off him and I wasn't good to start. BUT we got protests that I wasn't supposed to heal the steer until after the header had stopped and turned it. Nope, nothing in the rules other than the heal had to be after the head.

Heading from him was wild fast but I didn't have to throw the rope, just drop the noose over the horns and dally but leave enough so we didn't get caught by a horn when Banjo hit the brakes.

I gotta stop or I'll just ramble on. 

Frosty The Lucky 

I have not ridden a horse in over 40 years now. And even then it was from the barn to the field to strap the plow to. That was the 80's and we were still using an old walking plow. Wish i still had that old plow. 

We'd sold our horses and moved to a tract home a few years before I moved to Alaska, say 57 or so years ago. I've only sat a horse twice since both times to help with a horse's odd gate. Neither of the owners thought their horses were more than pets. One had a half thrown shoe that had weakened the hoof and didn't know a farrier who could make a corrective shoe. The other was a "barefoot" horse believer who "thought" hooves trimmed themselves. We don't have dry abrasive soils here so that doesn't work. Gave her the same farrier's #. 

I think I've been horseback for maybe 30 minutes total in the last half century.

Half century sounds more striking than 50 years eh?

Frosty The Lucky

Used to ride with the ex a good bit. I made the mistake of getting on an un-lunged barn-sour horse a couple of years ago, so I can claim about 8 seconds in about as many years. Judges didn't give me my score though. I know better, and I still do that kind of dumb move occasionally. This one (wife not horse) likes horses but I think she's a bit scared to train them herself and ride, having got a TBI from one and not having rode in a long while.