JJ: Tall Tails 1

Carrie, my helper in the store during the divorce who taped my broken hand to a book as a makeshift splint, had a horse she needed to sell. Cutter was a pretty Quarter Horse gelding, a lineback buckskin from the excellent lineage Owen Klapperich was raising. I didn't know it at the time, but Cutter had run wild in the woods for his first couple of years and was also what they refer too as "proud cut." (Some horses retain sexual behaviors after gelding and are often called "proud cut". In the past this was said to be due to some testicular tissue being missed during the gelding procedure allowing testosterone production, but not sperm production, to continue.) Cutter considered himself to be a stallion, which led to some dominance issues. His other problems were too much intelligence and no interest in serving Man. Or Woman. Oh, and a chronically bad ankle! All this came to light over the next few months. Bec's lifetime dream was to own a horse, so I worked out a deal to buy Cutter. Chuck Norick hauled him out to Lower Valley and we boarded him at George Wagner's place. Coincidentally, a lady who had helped out in the store in the past moved back to Kalispell about that time, and to stack serendipity on top of chance she was a horse trainer, and I was seriously interested in her. Ignorance is bliss: I was letting myself in for a rough ride in ways I'd never expected. TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)