Harley Meets Mr. Personality

I have to start this with some introductions......

1100 lbs of skin and bone

First there is Harley. I have mentioned him from time to time before, but you really need to get to know Harley. He is a 4 year old colt that should have been born as a dog not a horse. Harley does not have a mean bone in his body, but there are several stupid ones that hold him together. Not much bothers him, but he is afraid of fish - from a minnow to a 12 inch trout - it doesn't matter, if Harley sees a fish he won't go near the water at all, not even for a drink. Harley likes to stay around the house instead of going out in the meadow with the rest of the horses, I think he would come in and visit is you left the door open. He is a calm and gentle soul in a horses body and he is very far from the sharpest pencil in the box, Harley fits the saying, the lights are on but no one is home.

1600 lbs of solid muscle

Now for Mr. Personality, he is the orneriest, down right meanest bull I have ever been around. He hasn't spent a winter at home for at least 3 years that I know of, and I don't think he intends on coming home this year either. Mr. Personality will lay on the gate in the fall and wait for the cows to be pushed through, then he will ATTACK your horse so you will let him have his way with new batch of girls you just delivered into his trap. Harley was lucky enough not to have to deal with him last fall, but the rest of the horses and bulls try to avoid him all together. There must be a reason for it!!

I first met Mr. Personality out on the end of West Water in mid December the first year I was out here, and it was not a friendly introduction to say the least. Clay sent Roger and I out to get him with no warning other then 'don't get hurt', so out we went to find him. Thinking that this was going to be an easy capture because we could see him from the divide road, but when we got out to the end of the ledge were he should have been, he had disappeared, that was until Trotter and I came around the bottom side of the ledge, then I met Mr. Personality. It was like being T-Boned by a freight train. He hit me square on the side of my leg and it knocked  my sure footed Trotter about 5 feet down the shale hill. Before Trotter could get back on all four legs, he came at us again and was pushing us off the small ledge that we were on. I was trying to decide if I should take a chance on baling off on the downhill side and rolling all the way to the bottom of West Water or on Mr. Personalities side and trying to out run him on what I thought was for sure a broken leg. It was at the final moment that Roger came around the edge to see what had happened to me (Roger is never one to hurry to lend a hand), and Mr. Personality took his focus off of me and Trotter and turned to plant a square hit in the center of Bally's very broad chest. Trotter and I made our escape. After about 2 hours of fighting with Mr. Personality, I got him to chase me out to the top of the ridge were it would be even playing grounds for both parties. Behind Mr. Personality is the West Water Ridge where he first introduced himself to me, not a place where you want to be pushed off of.

About that time Clay sends me a text, 'r u ok?' I seems that he had been watching through the binoculars and waiting to see us come around with the bull walking ever so politely in front of us....not!!! When we were taking him up the backside of the hills, he was working us over, and when he would go down the front side, he would be going along like he was playing nice. I get another text from Clay, 'he seems to be doing good.' ..... whatever!!! When we got the bull back to the trailer, Clay struts out with some hay and a feed sack and starts talking to Mr. Personality. I was thinking that Clay surely was smarter than this, but he was still standing so we will just go with it. Clay got this totally jerk of a bull to follow him into the trailer by tossing him pellets. When he shut the trailer door, he said to him, 'there BEAUTIFUL'!!!! I couldn't believe what I had just watched, but my leg sure hurt. When I pulled up my pant leg to look it over, there was a dent in it and it was already purple.

We brought Mr. Personality home and he was missing by the next morning. That's Mr. Personality.

This spring we saw him up on top around the first of April, a sighting, that's about all you ever get. A month later we see him again, Clay said, 'we need to get him in', well we didn't see him again until one morning he was standing beside the road, I told Roger, 'we should just stop and take him to the corral'. We unloaded and went and gathered a few gals for him and by the time we got back, he was gone. I looked and looked all morning and couldn't find that bull.

The other day I got a text from Clay, 'the bull is laying on the fence by the corral under the tree, go get him and haul him to Ten Mile'. My very first thought was - oh my heck, we have Fergie and Harley, this ain't going to be easy, but ok. So I chose Harley, he is older and has more experience around cows, made sense to me until the bull stood up and started digging dirt and blowing snot at us. For the first time ever I think Harley was pay attention to what I wanted him to do and wondering 'why me'!! Roger was getting the corral ready and then he went out to stand in the middle of the road - not the best decision - but he never really thinks that I know anything, so I just went with it.

After a 10 minute warning from Mr. Personality, I sent in Button first to turn him around and around and around they went. I rode up to see if he would be willing to move, and he was, he charged poor Harley and pushed him around a while then he went straight for Roger, but this was a good thing because he ran like a chicken while screaming like a girl into the corral.....Mr. Personality was captured. It took a bit of convincing to get Roger back over to the gate to shut it, but he finally did it. He was a bit upset with me for laughing, but it was funny, and about to get funnier. Harley wasn't about to get on the inside of the corral with this monster, so I told Roger to get behind Mr. Personality and I would stay on the outside to keep Mr. Personality from jumping over the fence. 

This is where it really became comical, Mr. Personality was not happy about Harley guarding the fence line, so he sucker punched Harley in the lip when he noticed that Harley wasn't paying attention, then he charged Roger and gave him a ride on his head into the loading chute. I would have thought that Roger would have grabbed the fence as he zipped by and shut the gate, but it must not have crossed his mind because he didn't do it. As soon as Roger was delivered into the 6 inches of dust inside the chute, Mr. Personality was coming straight at Harley, who was still licking his bloody lip and wondering what happened. Harley was paying attention now and it was a good thing, Mr. Personality ran straight through the fence at Harley. I really didn't know that Harley could move that fast, but he got out of the way just as Mr. Personality came charging by. I will be honest, I was just praying that he missed all parts of me when the collision happened.

Now I was a bit concerned at this point because I knew that Harley would never be able to out run this bull to get him back, but when I looked in the direction that Mr. Personality was heading, things started looking a lot brighter. Just under the trees were some gals and Clay was coming up the road to help. Mr. Personality likes the gals so I gathered up a few of the gals and put them in the corral and Mr. Personality followed them in like the nice calm bull that he isn't, but it worked.

Mr. Personality is now over by West Water hanging out for the summer with the ladies, and Harley - I hope - learned something.


Harley stuck in a tree.

Mr. Personality looking at the gals.