It’s spring in Central Texas. The wild fla’rs are a’bloomin’, and the highways are jammed with parked cars alongside the road. Everyone is taking photographs with their cell phones of their baby or their girlfriend in just that perfect patch of Bluebonnets (the Texas state flower of which there are no less than six subspecies). The Mexican cliff swallows have returned with their aerial acrobatics. Sweeping around the front of the house catching flies and “skeeters,” they’re building mud nests in the porch ceiling. That way we get to watch their babies grow up. We also get dive bombed whenever we go out the front door!Spring brings a certain kind of rain as well.

A newcomer once asked a native what the weather was like here.  

The Native Texan answered, “There’s three seasons: the dry season, the wet season and the rainy season.” 

Newcomer asks, “So how do you tell the wet season from the rainy season?” 

The answer, “Wait, you’ll see!”

It happens almost every year that the rain turns off July first, like closing a spigot. Then, except for an occasional autumn rain, the drizzle doesn’t “set in” ‘til mid December, but it stays! I remember one winter we didn’t see the sun for nearly two months. That’s the wet season. Mud. Sticky, slick mud. Then in March we have gorgeous sunny days, the grass comes up, the flowers bloom, and just when you’re all saddled up for the picnic trail ride, the black clouds boil up and a half hour of torrential downpour floods the barn aisle with raindrops as big as bullets, and as cold as ice! When it’s over, the sun breaks out, there’s a magnificent rainbow in the east and the grass sparkles like diamonds. That’s the rainy season!

This week we had a horsemanship clinic with Mercedes Gonzalez from Spain. She has quite an impressive resume, having ridden, exhibited and taught in the major schools of Europe including the Real Escuela in Jerez Spain, and the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, Austria ( those famous white Lipizzaner stallions). A list of her own teachers reads like the library of equitation masters of the 20th century. Accordingly, we were not disappointed in her teaching one bit! No pun intended. She boiled down the essential basics into manageable concepts, and put all of us to work revamping our riding and focusing on “listening” to the horse through our seat-bones. We all tried to transcend our “deaf rear-ends” and I believe that our horses will be much more relaxed, happier, and able to perform with lightness and balance better than ever before, thanks to her explanations of horse psychology and biomechanics. Aside from all that, she has a gracious and enjoyable personality. She has wondrous stories, and her explanations are so beautifully clear and understandable as to be accessible even to this bucolic old cowboy rider. She is kind and gentle and has a wonderful sense of humor, yet she doesn’t let any bad riding habits go on corrected. She cares much for the horse, and even more for the rider. All in all we felt that there was more knowledge than we will ever remember gifted to us, presented by a person whom we will truly never forget, and whom we certainly hope to see many more times in the future. Remember to soften that inside rein!

Well, everybody went off to Austin leaving me to my own devices. This can be dangerous! After I weeded the garden and fed the hounds and the horses I got a message from Carlos that there was Cabrito in the fridge!

At 10:30 in the morning I dug out the meat, put a dry rub on it and added some garlic salt, fresh rosemary and comino (cumin) then after 20 minutes I poured in some real strong coffee and some water, put the cover on the pot, and popped it into the oven at 250°F. I went off to ride colts. 

In the evening I brought out the Cabrito, poured off the juice, threw in some flour, stirred it into gravy. Then I boiled a potato and mashed with butter, salt, pepper and half-and-half. While this was all happening I had a pile of greens, some turnip tops, Swiss chard, creases and mustard greens boiling on the stove. I added bacon and chopped shallots to the greens. When the crew got home, I served Cabrito, mashed potatoes, and gravy and fresh garden greens. There were almost no leftovers and I now have three more converts to eating goat! Cooking low and slow is such a help to someone who has other things to do, but mostly, the meat was so tender that it fell off the bone, and a “Gummer” could have eaten it! Mmmmmmm…Tender!

“That Mr. San Peppy, he could cut a cat out of a stove pipe!”

The cutting horse is not a modern invention. Long before there were corrals and headgates, when herders and drovers needed to sort animals for care and sales, there have been horses with an inborn tendency to focus their attention on other animals. In a young horse this might even be expressed as “cow dread.” Such is the morbid fascination with a cow, that any eye movement or ear twitch can produce a violent reaction by the colt. It doesn’t make them easy to ride, but you know they will really pay attention to cows later on. In Spring Roundup, cows and calves are separated to vaccinate and brand and “other operations.” Then at shipping time in the fall the big calves are “stripped off” the cows for shipment to market. This can be done in a chute, but before corrals, it was done in the open, with some riders holding the herd and others holding “the cut” while the cutter sorted all of the animals that were to be worked or sold. The skilled cutting horse still can do the job faster than the chute and with less injury and anxiety to the cows. When a cow is cut out, she will make several attempts to get back to the herd, which are blocked by a horse who can run and stop and turn around and even move sideways quicker than she can. There is no way to “ride” a horse into working a cow, because our own reflexes are too slow. The horse has to do this work on his own, being allowed to make split-second decisions.

It’s pretty exhilarating work riding a cutting horse, whether it be in a contest, or sorting cattle on the ranch. Not just any horse can do this type of work. The ones who can, mostly come from specific family lines, mostly from the Quarter Horse breed. However there have been other breeds that have done their share such as the Varian Arabians who are known to cut cattle well. We find that the Iberian breeds such as Andalusian(PRE) , and Lusitano have a lot of “cow sense” also. They have some common ancestry with quarter horses and many of them fight bulls (brave bulls or Toros Bravos) in the arena in a sport known as the Rejoneo. Horses who cut must have quickness, agility and early speed. They also need to develop “nerves of steel” to work in close to cattle, sometimes in contact almost like rugby or football. The rider must be ready for stopping, starting and jumping sideways repeatedly. If you are up to it, you’ll find yourself giggling at the strange sensation of a horse working on it’s own. If you’re not deep in the saddle and ready to adapt to quick changes in a millisecond, you may end up eating the horse’s mane!