My last post I mentioned my mentor Rusty Hitchcock. He's a well of stories and information so I thought I'd post Rusty's first horse story. A little background.George Hitchcock was a ferrier/blacksmith in Minassots around the turn of the cetury. He was my heighth,6'3 but weighted around 280 lbs.He was a horse trader and would travel picking up what he thought were good horses and train them on the road as he went from town to town.When he was gone one time someone came to the farm with a percheron mare to trade looking for a good saddle horse. Pamala traded a dead broke skinny mare for the Percheron figuring her for a good wagon horse as advertised.So George gets back with no horses, except the one he was riding the best of the lot, he traded them all and had a pocket full of money to boot. Paula traded a good horse(she was a little slim) for this mare. Oh well lets hook her up with the stallion King and s
ee what she can do.Her ground manners were fine untill he went to hooke her up then she kicked him through a 4 strand barbed wire fence. He jumped up and cold cocked her with the fence post under the ear. Paula shouted out "you killed my horse" he said "she's OK wait a bit".Soon enough she got up and shook it off and stood to be harnesed.Well King was an old hand at trainnig other horses so things went fine for a while untill they headed to the river. There was a limestone cut going down to the river where they had cut the stone to have a river crossing. This mare (I forget her name) diden't like it at all so she decided to bolt. George yeals woe, King plants them and the mare goes around him and slams streight ito the wall. Falls down cold out.Paula shouts out "ya killed my mare" George says "wait a bit"and soon enough she gets up and shakes it off.Rusty claims that after that you could not find a better driving horse. I'm not a writer but you get the gist of the story.If I get a response I'll recorde more stories and send them
as told by Rusty.
