Horsing Around

I was once invited to witness a horse collection.

If you are like me, and are unfamiliar with that term, let me just give you some advice. If someone asks you to come along on a horse collection… SAY NO. Or else prepare yourself to be traumatized. This is an experience I will not likely forget.

I was in San Luis Obispo of all places, at a wedding of all things. Because SLO was so far from our house, my redneck family decided to toe the trailer along and sleep in the bride/grooms horse pasture for the weekend. Yes, it’s true. Welcome to my life.

So we got there on a Thursday I believe, the wedding was planned for Saturday and we were leaving Sunday. I nice little weekend. Or so I thought.

(If you are a follower of my blog, this just so happens to be the same weekend that JayHans wrote me the first note asking me to be his girlfriend)

Friday morning, the bride- and to tell the whole story, this pair was renewing their vows, not first timers- was heading out to the barn and passed by my mother and myself on the way. She asked us if we wanted to go with her to collect the horse. I had my 6 year old cousin with me and I thought, ‘Sure… why not. All little girls like horses right? Maybe my cousin will really get a kick out of seeing Angela (the bride) go get the horse.’ Because that’s what collecting a horse means to me: getting the horse. Right? I mean, I knew they were using a horse drawn carriage in the ceremony…

Now, the bride and groom are horse breeders. I knew this going into it. But what does that really mean to a 14 year old? Not much, I assure you. A 14 year old doesn’t really put much thought into how horses come to be on this earth. And if I had thought about it, I would have never imagined it would be like this…

Angela takes us into this open area of the barn. In the middle of this open area, there is a fake horse. And what I mean by that is literally, that; A padded cylinder, which is meant to be the body, and a plastic horse head. I am still not catching on to what is about to happen. And don’t forget, I have my 6 year old cousin perched on my hip.

So Angela leaves and returns with a horse. Easy as that. She went and collected her horse and now the story is over. Ha! Fat chance.

My mother, cousin and I all pet the horse and we are ooing and awing over the guy, while Angela is explaining that this horse is a male and is ready to mate and blah blah blah. I wasn’t really paying attention. And that is entirely my fault. I will never forgive myself for that.

After a few minutes, another ranch hand comes in with another horse. And as soon as this other horse comes in, our friend the male horse starts to get crazy. Angela tells us to get back, but of course the horse had already made that pretty clear to us. So we go and get behind a gate and watch as this male horse starts to literally lose his head over what I could only assume at that point, was a female horse. I have to tell you that I thought men were horny… men are calm, subdued little sloths compared to a horse that has spotted what he wants.

As the female horse is being paraded around the male horse, I can’t help but notice that- I warn you, this is alarming- her vagina is waving at him. I am talking opening and closing and pulsing and yea. No joke. Angela was explaining to us that the female was letting off a smell that only he could detect, and I was thinking ‘No shit!’

So as you can imagine, by lap two of the female’s parade of champions, the male horse had… extended. And by extended I mean… EXTENDED. And now my cousin is starting to cry because the dude horse is making all kinds of crazy sounds and jumping around and like I said, all around losing his mind. I’m trying to shield her eyes from what I am sure is about to happen when the male horse jumps up on the FAKE horse.

As soon as he does this, Angela gives the sign for the ranch hand to take the female out of the ring and I could immediately see why. This horse started beating this fake horse like I have never seen. Obviously, he was humping it, but his front hooves, which were on top of the fake horse, were beating down as if he were trying to kill the thing- thus the padding. I am not kidding you, this horse was screaming and humping and ramming and pounding down on the poor thing so hard, that I was looking for cover myself. So much so that the metal rods holding the fake horse up were swaying so badly I thought this was going to be the last rodeo for both horses. I remember thinking ‘how do horses survive this in nature.’ There was no way that that female would have left that ring in one piece had we left them up to their own devices.

But this is not the strangest part.

While this horse was going nuts, Angela- fearless renewed bride to be- jumped under the horse with what can only be described as a wiener vacuum and started ‘collecting’ him. And it’s not just like she put the thing on and got out of the way, oh no. She had to somewhat manually gather what she came to gather (no pun intended).

But this part is the same with both men and male horses. Once he got excited, it was over pretty quick, and once he was done, he was done. He got down and walked out as if he deserved a pat on the back.

I can’t say that Angela got out of there ‘clean’, but she didn’t die, which was a very real possibility. My mom laughed, my cousin cried and I was shocked. How could I have come so completely unprepared for such a thing? Well I can promise you this, I haven’t attended any horse collections since, and it will be a cold day in hell before I do again.