Brushing the outside of a horse

There are those who believe that old sayings are wise because someone now dead said them or wrote then or carved them into the cave walls a long time ago.

But it’s our journalistic duty to laugh at ones that are just ridiculous.

Case in point: “There’s something about the outside of a horse that’s good for the inside of a man.”

Have you ever brushed the outside of a horse? I don’t mean just getting the Cretaceous crust off him with a curry comb. I mean getting a soft brush in there all the way to bedrock (or his skin) whichever comes first.

Depending on where you live, you will find hidden in that soft brush such things as yellow snow, goatheads, trail dust, horse slobber from one of his corral mates that settled in and dried, and dead grass. If you’re fortunate enough to share your world with bugs, you might come across a cockroach corpse or two.

Protein! With the benefit of hindsight, which occurs in mule packers with great experience, such as myself, I figured out we weren’t supposed to eat horse brushings, but absorb them into our souls, so we can fool others into thinking we know a lot.

One question here: How smart does a horseman have to be to mount up on top of some mangy volcano who’s dedicated to the random scattering of cowboy parts on at least 17 acres?

Of rocks. But the final definition of being a real cowboy is then to sit up in that convenient pile of cactus and horse manure and grin and say, “I told you he was spirited!”

Brought to you by old bunkhouse cowboys like Windy Wilson, who always have something to say to enrich our lives.