Chapter 5
Horses In The Early Years

In the fall of 1925 Lillian and Edgar had married and were making plans to go farming in 1925. I can understand now how they were planning to raise money much better than I did then. Edgar had his own team of horses which he relinquished at home. One mare, Lila, had raised a filly in 1924 - she was coming two in October 1925. He had also worked a large part of the previous winter doing chores for Albin, and spent a lot of spare time making a set of show harness for "Rose and Lila". Rose was blue roan. Lila was black. They were a nice team and we saw them often at our place in the winter of 1924-1925. He offered to sell Papa the two year old mare "Ruby", and his set of show harness. I won't quote the figure - I don't know why, but maybe I consider it a slightly personal affair. Ruby was bought partly as a team mate for the mare we had raised the same age that we called Mabel. She was a colt from Queen. They were to be Charlie's team and were both Farceur colts, one of Hodgen's current stallions. Mabel and Rudy grew Into a fairly big team and Charlie took them north in 1933. The harness I mentioned was slightly "out of this world" at that time. Edgar made a special order for a pair of bridles at "Woods Brothers" harness shop in Regina. The two bridles cost sixteen dollars - at today's prices they would probably cost $150. After 1925 when I was doing the harness repair work at home, I started adding to a set of harness of mine to bring it up to a better show standard. I didn't quite get it as showy as Charlie's but I was a little proud to think that it was a close second. At farm auction sales in the next few years, Charlie and I were often invited to bring our harness and tail braiding skills to dress up the horses for sale. We enjoyed to some extent thinking that our help would probably make the horses sell a little better. But it also brought us ten dollars for the day's efforts. Sometime in 1924 Papa acquired a team of small mules, Tom and Jennie from Karl Larsen. He traded a big clumsy Clydesdale gelding for them. I don't know where Papa got "Big Prince" but he was sure glad to get rid of him. He also got a fairly good set of driving harness with them. They became his favorite driving team and he just loved to keep their mane and tails trimmed to neat perfection. I don't know what their ages were, but they were a good, useful team until about 1930 when they began to fail. They were always right on cue, sometimes even a little ahead. Only a horseman will understand what I am talking about. Take for instance when fed oats, they would stand back "politely", and never take a bite until you were out of their stall. They were gentle when being cleaned and harnessed and were never in the way even when cleaning their stalls. If all mules were as well trained and gentle as Tom and Jennie I could easily accept them as well as the best horses I ever worked with. We could drive them to town on a slack line and they would jog, trot and make good time. You did not freeze your hands holding tight lines like we had to do with May and Major. Some of the few remaining sisters and myself have a photo of Papa's mules hitched to the old "jumper" with Papa and Mama dressed to go visiting. It was probably taken about 1926, a time when our parents were still well and strong, the way we like to remember them. I have a copy on my front room wall.

Our horse production in the 1920's varied a lot from one to three colts a year. Polly was our most productive brood mare, she raised nine colts from 1919 to 1932, I don't believe she was ever serviced more than once to develop a pregnancy and we never saw her colts born. Up until about 1926 our brood mares and yearling and two year old colts would run loose on the prairie in the spring, at least until the crop was up when we brought them home. The mares were kept at home and the yearlings and two year olds were often taken away for the summer to different pasture operators down at the river. A day or two before Polly was due to foal, she and her followers would disappear to some quiet corner out on the prairie, and she didn't come home until her foal was two or three days old. She was as wild as could be when loose and completely quiet when put in the pasture. Her family of colts were made up of six gray horses, two were sorrel and one roan. Only one was a mare, but they were all sound, good work horses, easy to break, though not spectacular walkers. Only one made lead horse quality. Little Maud raised three colts, Molly, Pat and Rex. The latter two were Jock colts. Mabel raised two colts, Dolly and another that died as a two year old. Queen raised one filly, Mabel, in 1924, a Farceur sired mare.

May who became a good driving horse in 1924 raised a colt in 1923, She was in Hannah's pasture in 1922 as a two year old when she got with foal, raising her colt the next year. We didn't even try to use her that year, but Papa may have broke her to ride a little that year. She was to raise us four standard bred colts in the late 1930's, four Clyde colts plus one sired by a Belgian stallion in the early 1940's. Nine of these colts were foaled after she was fifteen years old, rather an amazing record. The sorrel mare "Bird" that Papa bought from John Achen in 1923 raised four colts in five years beginning in 1924. This adds up to 38 colts raised between 1919 and 1943. Papa and our older brothers handled those foaled up to 1924, after that Earl and I did most of the horse breaking. May was an exceptional quality horse, even though she was really only a driver type. The only recollection I have of her being used in the field was in 1924. Papa did a little bit of seeding with Jack and Nancy, Little Bird and May. I think he was literally flying - that was the last time the old shoe drill was used. May's first colt, Major, was slow to mature, and I don't think he was used much until he was four years old in 1927, the year Nancy was given to Edgar and Lillian. He kind of fell into place as a new team mate for May. They were a top rate driving team until Earl got an idea of trading him off for a rather useless "Indian pony" that was neither a good driving horse nor saddle pony. Any time we saddled her for a ride, her first objective was to unload you. She never bucked us off as we were always ready, and after a few initial leaps, she would settle down to better behavior. When hitched with May to drive, she was in a hurry to get going, but after a couple of miles she was tired. She was traded off for a cow, the cow was sold and that was the end of Major's usefulness. I was rather displeased about the whole thing, but I suppose we all make some mistakes.

In the summer of 1934, Archie Irving from Fillmore asked if he could make a one day a week stand at our place with a lovely, brown standard bred stallion. I agreed and although it seems he didn't leave many mares in foal, our May was and also one of Paul Peterson's mares, Rose. There will be more on this later on in better sequence.

A difficult problem in the Halbrite area in the spring of 1926 was an outbreak of influenza among the horses. Almost everyone who had ten or twelve horses had three or four sick with it. Drs. Gibson and Stinchcombe in Weyburn were very busy for at least ten days doing what they could to be of help. The treatment was almost totally restricted to dosing with quinine. It was in powder form and difficult to administer. I can only remember now the two cases we had were both mares with foal. Dovey was carrying twin colts and we lost all three of them. Mabel was also with foal and we lost her too. Phil Jones also lost one or two. It happened in late winter, March I believe, and Papa wondered if the other horses that were sick would be in shape for spring work. Sorrel Bird had a light touch of it, but she recovered and gave birth to a healthy filly as well.