Provo

Having been riding now and again with my friend Karen Callan, up in the foothills, Patrick and I took a perverse interest in her younger horse, Provo, who she was bringing on as her future endurance horse. Every week I'd return home with the latest "Provo Story", the best of which was Karen returning home from a ride one evening met up with some pygmy goats. Provo hadn't ever seen pygmy goats before, let alone ones in long grass, so he was a bit nervous, but was dealing well with it - until the pygmy goats stood up on their back legs for a better look at him. Provo vacated the area, Karen (as she later told me incredulously) didn't ("I fell off!! I can't believe it!"), bucking as he went.

When Karen first got him, his main concern seems to have been getting rid of her, so he could go home early for dessert. They had a few battles, and, I suspect, implanted in Karen's mind a permanent slight exasperation of him.

Lucky for us, she actually worked through these battles with him, so we don't have to deal with them. He would go on regular training/conditioning rides with Karen's mare, Sassy, and gradually, over the months began to shape up as a trail horse. He'd originally come from Elverta in the Sacramento Valley (funnily enough, where we are keeping him now), which is very flat, and he'd done mostly arena work, so you could hardly blame him for being hopeless on the trail. He spent a month with a trainer in Auburn, who pronounced him immature and just needing to be brought on slowly. So that's what Karen did. She walked him along many slow trails, keeping him calm and mentally collected. She broke him of his habit of having to run up every hill, and generally calmed him down. The harder the work got, the better he was.

Karen's friend Mary began to ride him on a regular basis and they conditioned him and Sassy together. In early May, at my suggestion, Mary took Provo along to the Washoe Lake ride and competed in the 25 mile. Provo loved it and they would have come in first, but for Mary's decision to conservatively save his legs in the last deep sandy section. Six weeks later, they completed the NASTAR 50, up in Nevada. Provo recovered well at every vet check, and spent most of his time scarfing down food. With the exception of a slight slip over on a steep, slippery section of trail (Mary and he parted company and he ran off in a panic, and was later found shaking a few miles down the trail ["Where's Mom and Sassy??"]) he did super well and Karen was very proud of him.

But it didn't quite change her mental view of him. Her mare Sassy is so perfect and good, Provo's "busy personality" showed him up in comparison. The more Karen talked about him and his odd "problems", the more I liked him (major failing in my genetic makeup - I always seem to latch on to the "personality-filled" horses... why don't I choose the dull ones?)

 OK. So what's wrong with him, you ask?

When you're out on the trail with Provo, he's constantly busy, looking around, gawping at "stuff", to the extent where he doesn't always look where he's going. Well, OK, he hardly ever looks where he's going. He goes through, up and over anything, but don't expect him to be picking his way delicately through the rocks.

Earlier this month when Karen was training for Tevis, they took him and Sassy along the first 30 miles of the Western States Trail from Squaw Valley to Robinson Flat. Karen says the entire ride, all she could hear behind her was Mary cursing Provo's lack of attention to his feet...

  He has "sensitive" back legs - that's to say, even when you hose them he kicks out at the water - and is a little enthusiastic with his rear leg, er... action.... when it comes time for farriering. I'm hoping my farrier will be patient with him, and we are going to work on desensitizing him as much as possible.

 He can be awkward for bridling if you try and rush him. He can manage to tangle himself up in his lead rope while standing tied up and end up like a trussed chicken. He bullied Sassy... those sort of antics... all of which added up in Karen's mind. The final sad comment she made to me one day, after a particularly good ride with Sassy, was that she couldn't ever see herself wanting to ride him for 100 miles.

It was finally coming to light. Whatever his successes or his failings, his particular personality just didn't push Karen's buttons - which is, afterall, what counts in a relationship between you and your horse. On the other hand, as I say, the more we heard, the more we liked. In her mind, he would always be a little bit of "that jerk horse"... which we would translate into "he's such a character..."

 So it finally came about. One day, Patrick (who insisted that we didn't need another horse until we were living up in the mountains) let slip that maybe Provo should come and live with us. I sounded Karen out, and the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of us having him, because he just wasn't the right horse for her.

 On Saturday 26 July 1997 we took delivery of Patrick's first ever horse and turned him out with Mouse and another pasture mate...