Chapter 3
Back to the drawing board. The cowboys decided it might be better to ride him out inside their corral.. but, this time they'd be better prepared for his bucking. I was told that he unloaded each one of the cowboys that had the guts to get on him and try to force him to run. He bucked them off right there in front of a crowd... This is when Gus was returned to my custody.
So, I guess this concludes the story of Gus and his bucking. Over the following years, Gus and I had this understanding. If I was going to have fun, hoop and holler and gouge him to make him run... he was going to have a little fun, TOO. By this time, I was quite confident that he could buck me off any time he wanted to. So, I made a sincere effort to never make him want to. He served me many years as an extremely good elk hunting mountain horse. He never bucked me off again.
There was one more pertinent fact that had a lot to do with Gus flunking obedience school up on the ranch the way he did. Come to find out... "Gus was absolutely terrified of cows." Totally terrified. His eyes would look like saucers and his nostrils would dilate to about the size of pop cans when he saw that he was approaching a cow. I'll bet that even on the day he died, if I tried to make him run and catch a cow, he would have bucked me off. Through the years, I had several people admire Gus and say, "Boy, look at those muscles!! I'd sure like to try him on roping steers.. " I'd think, sometimes out loud, "No you wouldn't.."
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