MEMOIRS PART 6 - THE MARE NAMED "GWENNY"

My next recollection is of a mare named Gwenny. She was a natural pacer, and Dad seemed to have a fixation on horses with special gaits. He got her from LeRoy Anderson, and named her after one of LeRoy's daughters. She was also gentle and docile, but not as obedient and co-operative as Topsy.

When I wanted to ride Topsy, no matter where she was, even in a wide-open field, all I had to do was walk up to her, put a bridle or a hackamore on her, get on, and ride away. Gwenny was different. In an open field she stayed about 20 feet from me and moved away if I tried to come closer. In a corral it was different. She seemed to realize it was hopeless to move away, so she stood firmly while I approached and put the bridle on. Her one weakness was oats. If I put a handful of oats into a bucket and approached her in a field, she would come to me immediately. Once, I needed to catch her and didn't have any oats, so I just took the bucket. She came anyway and although I felt some remorse, she didn't seem to mind.

Gwenny had many colts, and I can remember one of them clearly, When he was two years old, and I was 13 or 14, I decided he was big enough to ride. He had been trained to lead when he was just a young colt, had been around the barnyard all that time, and was quite gentle. One day without saying anything to Dad, I led him to what we called the "Bullpen", a heavily fenced area about 50 feet square, and after some preliminary petting and calming, I jumped on. He immediately started bucking and threw me off just as Dad walked up. I wasn't hurt or even shaken up, so Dad caught him, told me to get back on, and then he led him around the corral until the horse had calmed down. Dad handed me the hackamore rope, and I rode around for a few minutes. It was only a few days until I could ride him outside. His name was "Pig", and he became Dad's favorite horse after I left. Dad changed his name to "Sport" after a horse his father had, and which Dad always admired.

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This reminds me of the only time I ever heard Dad say anything even mildly critical of his father. A few days after his father died, I asked Dad what was going to happen to the original Sport that had belonged to his father. He said with a sad and disappointed look on his face, "Father gave him to Farrell Johnson." Incidentally, I never heard Dad refer to his father as anything but "Father".