Riding Bareback

My dad Hal Thompson turns 85 tomorrow! Happy Birthday, Dad! Please keep him in your prayers as he is really suffering health wise right now!

Dad’s childhood cowboy stories have always fascinated me.  In honor of his birthday enjoy. His words below:

“I remember asking my dad often when I could have my own horse. He would say I could have one when I was big enough. I rode one particular horse regularly when I was five years old. But I always had to ride bare back because Dad said he didn’t want a horse dragging me by the stirrup. I found out later what he meant because of something that happened when I was ten years old. I was riding a wild three-year-old mare. My legs were not long enough to reach the bottom of the stirrups, so I opened up the leather straps that held the stirrups and stuck my feet in on top of the stirrups. I was riding with two of my dad’s best horsemen, who incidentally were brothers. One worked for Dad regularly and the other broke horses for my dad at the man’s own ranch.

We had been riding for three or four hours, and I was riding ahead of the cowboys. For some reason I decided I would stop the horse and get off. When I started to get off, my foot and leg went through the leather up to my knee. My other foot just barely touched the ground. When the two brothers saw what had happened, one came up on one side of the horse and one on the other, and each one grabbed a rein. The man on the left side of the horse, where I was, just picked me up and put me back in the saddle, where he could take my leg out easily. I was so thankful! Then he said, “Don’t ever do that again.” But I always remember from that incident that a mistake made on some of these wild horses can be not only dangerous but deadly.

So, as I mentioned, I would always ride bareback. My only problem was that I was too little to swing up on the horse, so if I had to get off for some reason, I’d have to lead the horse to a place where I could get back on. Many a time, I led the horse a half mile or so to a barbed wire fence, then I’d climb up on the fence. Often I was barefooted, so I had to climb very carefully. Inevitably, just as I got high enough on the fence to leap on to the horse, the horse would scoot out about two or three feet and stand there, so I’d have to climb back down and try again. Sometimes it would take 15 or 20 minutes to get on a horse from a fence. It was easier if I could find a ditch to get the horse into and then I could just jump on.”

Dad is a missionary and pastor.  You can find his ministry blogs at Teaching Truth Today or Enseñando las Escrituras.