Tuesday’s Show and Tail… Tuffy Loves to Tease

It’s "Tuesday’s Show & Tail" time again! Angela, over at West Virginia Treasures, has been hosting this special time for several months, and it is always a lot of fun to see all the interesting posts of the people who join in! Angela hosts this meme to share about past or present pets, animal friends we’ve known, or interesting stories about animals. This is the 45th one.  If you’d like to join, here is the link to the Guidelines.

As I’ve mentioned before, we keep my son’s horse, Tuffy, here because when my son’s new job moved him, he wasn’t able to take Tuffy with him. That’s ok, because horses are herd animals, and he is a companion for my old horse, Cory.

The thing is, he LOVES to tease the corgis!

He will come right up to the fence and snort on them, or swing his head toward them just to irritate them!

It makes them SOOO MAD! 

It is really funny to watch, so I made a short video so you could see what I mean…

Tuesday’s Show and Tail… Tuffy

Hurray! I’m finally getting the chance to share another "Tuesday’s Show & Tail."  This meme is hosted every week by Angela over at West Virginia Treasures, and it is always a lot of fun to see all the interesting posts of the people who join in! This is the 34th one that Angela has hosted, and I really appreciate the friends I have made through it. Tuesday's Show and Tail gives us a chance to share about past or present pets or furry friends we’ve known. If you’d like to join, here is the link to the Guidelines.

Tuffy is my son’s registered American Quarter Horse. He is 23 years old now, so he gets a pretty heavy winter coat. It always amazes me each year when Tuffy sheds his cream colored winter coat, and turns into the most beautiful golden color you’ve ever seen! It’s almost like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

Our Golden Tuffy…

It’s Tuesday again and time for another "Tuesday’s Show & Tail." This meme is hosted every week by Angela over at West Virginia Treasures, and it is always a lot of fun to see all the interesting posts of the people who join in! It is a meme to share about past or present pets or furry friends we’ve known. If you’d like to join, here is the link to the Guidelines.

I had a couple of ideas about a couple of other horses we’ve had, but found I’ll have to find their pics and get them scanned before I can share them with you, so today, I’ll tell you about my son’s horse that we have out here now. We call him Tuffy, though he has a really long fancy registered name, which my son forgets half the time, because he’s known him as “Tuffy” for many years.


One of our dear friends, Tom Cain, bred and raised some of the top line quarter horses in California for many years. Tom was a friend of my Dad for many years and they’d met up at Fess Reynold’s place, where Tom worked in the 50’s (when those 8MM films were taken that I shared a few weeks back.) He lived about 5 miles from where we live now, and had 5 stud horses and about 30 mares. Over the past 20 years or so, Tom and my son, Mick (Little Bear’s Dad) got to be really close, and Tom taught Mick a great deal about training horses. This is a portrait of Tom’s life that I did last year, just after he passed away. The original is 12 x 14 and it is done in graphite (pencil).



Tom was getting quite elderly and couldn’t do as much as he used to, so Mick helped him a lot and was able to learn so much from him. Tom raised some of the most beautiful horses, but they were priced in a range that was WAY out of our league, so even though Mick longed for one, he never expected to ever be able to afford one.



About 16 years ago or so, Tom sold Tuffy (after Mick had helped green break him) to a woman that wanted a beautiful horse to train for Dressage work. They started him on that, and then she sold him and the next people wanted him to learn to do Quarter Horse Western Riding work. This confused Tuffy and, as with most ALL horses, if you ASK and show them what you want, they will do anything for you, but if you try to force them and they don’t understand, they start to fight back!


This is what happened to Tuffy, and eventually, no one could do anything with him, so his price dropped down to $2500 (about a quarter of what he originally sold for). Tom got him back, about 8 or 9 years ago, and made arrangements with Mick to take payments, and this beautiful golden boy came to be owned by my proud son.


Mick worked with Tuffy patiently for a long time, and he could ride him and do most anything with him, but then when his job required him to move a couple of years ago, he brought Tuffy here. He isn’t sure if he will ever be able to afford to keep him where he lives now, but he also doesn’t want him to go to anyone who isn’t VERY experienced and willing to gain his trust, because you still can't move fast around his head, etc., so right now, he is being a good companion horse to my Cory.


Tuffy is 21 years old now, but is still a gorgeous horse… one of those palominos that sheds out in the spring as bright gold as a a newly minted gold coin. His winter coat, which he is in now, is a slightly dappled dark cream color.

Two Horses... an email

You may have seen this as I got it as an email, but it really had some good things to think about, so I thought that I would share it in case…

Two Horses

There is a place in the countryside with a field that has two horses in it. From a distance, each horse looks like any other horse. But if you stop your car, or are walking by, you will notice something quite amazing...

Looking into the eyes of one horse will disclose that he is blind. His owner has chosen not to have him put down, but has made a good home for him. This alone is amazing.

If you stand nearby and listen, you will hear the sound of a bell.
Looking around for the source of the sound, you will see that it comes from the smaller horse in the field. Attached to the horse's halter is a small bell.
It lets the blind friend know where the other horse is, so he can follow.

As you stand and watch these two friends, you'll see that the horse with the bell is always checking on the blind horse and that the blind horse will listen for the bell and then slowly walk to where the other horse is, trusting that he will not be led astray. When the horse with the bell returns to the shelter of the barn each evening, it stops occasionally and looks back, making sure that the blind friend isn't too far behind to hear the bell.


Like the owners of these two horses, God does not throw us away just because we are not perfect or because we have problems or challenges.

He watches over us and even brings others into our lives to help us when we are in need...sometimes we are the blind horse being guided by the little ringing bell of those who God places in our lives, and other times we are the guide horse, helping others to find their way...

Good friends are like that. You may not always see them, but you know they are always there. Please listen for my bell and I'll listen for yours. And remember...

Be kinder than necessary- Everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

Lady Bug... My First Real Horse

Time for another "Tuesdays' Show & Tail" hosted by Angela over at West Virginia Treasures! It is a meme to share about past or present pets or furry friends we’ve known. If you’d like to join, here is the link to the Guidelines. Angela, we appreciate the opportunity to share some of our treasured friends or other interesting animals we’ve seen!

My Dad was my very first horse, and I about “rode him into the ground!” I had loved horses from the time I was a very young baby. My Mom used to tell me that I would cry when I was only one year old if I saw a horse and couldn’t sit on it. (Most of these colored pics were taken off of 8 MM films my Dad took.)

She said she thought it was because the one and only time she got on a horse, she found out later, she was pregnant. (She was afraid of horses, though my Daddy loved them.)

The highlight of my year was going to my Daddy’s company picnics because they always had them at Hart Park where there was a Pony Riding Ring, and we have a lot of 8MM films of me bobbing along on a pony when I was very young. I took this picture off of that film.

They also had a carousel that was my second favorite ride… because of the horses, of course!

My Daddy loved horses from the time he was tiny, too, and 2 of the few pictures I have of him as a child is with him beside and on a horse.

These would have been taken in about 1923 when he was 3 years old.

During my tenth year, he made friends with several people at one of the stables, and “got me a job” training a 6th month old filly. He told me that the man that owned her would even let me name her, and since she was a Pinto, I called her Lady Bug.

Her mother was a dark bay pinto with the exact same markings as Lady Bug, but Lady, herself, was a buckskin colored pinto. Her father was a very famous (in our area of California) Palomino Saddlebred/ Quarter Parade Horse.

Later, when I started riding her, we found out that she was a natural “single-footer” and had that wonderful “running walk” gait that is so wonderful to ride. She could go for miles in that gait at 7 miles an hour with no trouble when she was older, because my Dad rode beside me on a little Honda scooter for about 2 miles and paced her. She wasn’t even overly warm when we slowed down!

About a month or so after I started training her, my 11th birthday came around, and I found out that Daddy had gotten her for me. We have 8 MM film of THAT too, and this is a clip of about 2 seconds after they told me that Lady Bug was mine. Can you see the smile?

I had Lady until I was almost 16 years old, and she had a buckskin filly that we named Dusty. My Dad had a really bad heart problem during the last 10 years of his life, and, as I’ve mentioned before, he passed away when I was 17. That last year or so, he was very sick and in a lot of pain, and we had to sell Lady at that time. She went to the friend of a good friend of ours and lived out the rest of her life at that place. They registered her as a pinto and used her as a brood mare because her foals came out pinto and they had that wonderful running walk, from what we heard.