JIMMY DEAN AND BRIAN’S PUMPKIN One year in the late 1960s, we went up to the Ada, Oklahoma, Quarter Horse Sale to buy a gelding for one of my customers’ teen aged daughters and ended up buying two. I kept a bay Brian H gelding that stood a little over 15 hands tall, named Brian’s Pumpkin. He had come off one of the big ranches in Oklahoma and was green broke, which meant he’d had a saddle on him but tht was about it. When I started riding him, I soon realized what a spook he was. If I got too still and quiet on him and then moved or spoke, he would break in two bucking with me, so I had to talk to him or sing to him (God forbid) the entire time I was 32
Pat’s Horse Tales
on his back so he wouldn’t forget I was there. I always rode him with my anti-buck device, which was a piggin’ string hung around his neck, then threaded through the pommel to hook over the saddle horn. If a horse tried to get his head down, which is what they did when they bucked, he would choke himself. Punk was a really handy horse with a great way of going, but he was a perpetual daydreamer. If he was asleep in his stall and there was any loud bang, like a water bucket hitting the wall in some other stall, he would squall and just start bucking in his stall. He had great conformation,
