Quietly but firmly, Henry urged the colt forward again by raising his hand behind him and making a loud kissing sound. The colt took another very worried step and stopped, head high, eyes showing white and tail tucked between his hind legs. “I know, buddy,” Henry said softly. “It’s gonna be okay. You’ll see. But you’re gonna have to move now. I promise. It’ll be okay.” With that, Henry flapped his arm to his side, kissed loudly, and the colt was off. He took two steps, then, with a loud bawl, he jumped high in the air and snapped both hind feet directly out behind him. He made two jerky laps around the pen, bucking, spinning, bawling, snaking his body and kicking out, before sorting himself out and settling into a gallop.

It was life or death for the colt. His instincts told him that anytime anything clamped onto his back like this thing had, he was not likely to live through it. He fought with everything he had until it became clear he was not going to dislodge the thing by kicking at it. When he came to that realization, he decided perhaps he could outrun it. Unable to kick it off or outrun it, and realizing it wasn’t actually harming him in any way, he slowed himself, sweaty and out of breath, and after dozens of dusty laps around the pen, stopped.

As soon as he did, Henry eased up to him and, talking to him quietly, uncinched the saddle and took it and the pad from his back. Henry then placed both items on the fence, and left the pen, allowing the colt time to relax and think about what had just transpired.

Initially for the colt, the process had been terrifying and something he didn’t think he would live through. Yet, he also realized he was really no worse for the wear other than being sweaty and a little winded. In fact, living through yet one more thing that at first he thought might kill him, had actually given him a strange sort of confidence. It was for that reason that when Henry came back in the pen an hour later and resaddled the colt, the colt accepted it as if he’d been wearing a saddle all his life, and carried it this time without raising any dust or showing any worry.

Henry saddled and unsaddled the colt three more times in the next two hours, urging the colt to move each time, and each time the colt did without any trouble. The last time Henry saddled the colt that day, he brought his horse Mic into the pen, also saddled and bridled. Henry haltered the saddled colt, climbed aboard Mic, and began ponying the colt around in the pen while he rode. He ponied him first one direction, then the other, then back. He then eased Mic up to the colt’s left side so the colt could get used to having someone up above him, then put his hand on the colt’s saddle horn and rocked the saddle back and forth so the colt could feel something moving the saddle that was strapped to him. He hung over the colt’s saddle, slapping at the leather seat, picking up and dropping the stirrup leathers against the colt’s sides, and brushing his hand and arm over the colt’s rump. He repeated all of this on the colt’s right side, then went back and did it all again several more times on both sides.