The 6,000 spectators at Road to the Horse had their first official look at the 2009 colts on Saturday afternoon when the geldings were run into the arena.
The Colts
Randy and Laurie Dunn, of Bath Brothers Ranch near Laramie, Wyoming, provided 10 unbroken 3-year-old American Quarter Horse geldings from the famous Blue Valentine/Driftwood line of working cow horses for this year's Road to the Horse competition. They were all solid, unspoiled colts; the result of generations of careful breeding that has consistently produced excellence in the physically and mentally demanding job of being a working cow horse.
The colts had been "rough halter broke" as weanlings, then turned out for the next 2½ years to grow up around cattle, wildlife, wild weather, challenging country, and predators. It's not that they weren't handled at all. They were only handled as much as necessary-and that was by good horsemen. While the group of them could be described as extraordinarily naive in comparison to colts raised in a barn-and they were certainly frightened by their new surroundings-there was also no mishandling or undue trauma in their backgrounds for the trainers to overcome.
The Draw
Luck of the draw is a major component of this competition. It's not a matter of picking a "good" horse or a "bad" horse; although certainly some horses have easier temperaments to work with than do others. Ultimately, as John said, "It's such a guess. Honestly, you flip a coin and hope you have enough knowledge to work with what you chose when the horse throws a monkey wrench into your plan."
The trainers drew numbers from a hat to decide who got first, second, and third pick. Tommy Garland got to choose first, and he picked a nice grulla colt named Blue Leo Bonnet. This colt was also Richard's and John's first pick. Richard went second, and he chose a soft-eyed little bay named Plenty Brown Hancock. John, in third position, then chose a big, solid sorrel named A Dunn Wiggy.
Choosing a partner who might work best in this competition is essentially the same as picking out any good prospect. John was looking for an inquisitive colt who watched him, would be big enough to stand up to the hard work that would be asked of him, and had a pretty gait.
He walked into the herd of colts to check their responses to him. As the others moved away, the big, sorrel colt stood and focused on him. "He was afraid, but stayed watching me. I knew he would be a little more difficult. He was a bigger, stronger, more aggressive colt."
The remaining seven colts were removed from the arena and the three that had been chosen were run into separate round pens. The trainers had a total of an hour to work with their colts in the pen, but had to give them an additional 10 minutes of rest time at a point of their choosing.
