I grew up watching Rex Trailer a local TV "Cowboy". Rex had Goldrush, a gorgeous palomino. And of course there was Roy Rogers and Trigger, and let's not forget Mr. Ed. All beautiful palominos.
Oscar was a palomino, too. Well technically. He was kind of yellow, with a kind of beige-whitish mane and tail.
That's as far as his resemblence to the aforementioned palominos went.
Not to put too fine a point on it: Oscar was butt-ugly. He had a big head with a roman nose. If you've ever read the Terry Pratchett Discworld stories: Oscar was the equine equivalent of the Igors, without the stitches and scars. He looked as if someone threw horse parts in a pile, then asked a bunch of preschoolers to pin the pieces together to make a horsie.
However, Oscar had one HUGE thing going for him: he wasn't Zero.
Oscar was a bit over 15 hands, too - we'd graduated to a horse! We still sometimes had to ride Zero if someone else (actually his eventual owner) was riding Oscar - but we'd managed to advance a grade in the Buzz School of Equitation, which was heady stuff.
Not to say Oscar was well-trained. Nope, no one would ever have said that. Oscar was pretty typical of Buzz's herd of little-girl-dream-crushers: like Zero before him, he often seemed to be striving to destroy all the horse-as-magical-creature fantasies we might have had the misfortune to entertain.
We were stubborn little sods, though. We. Loved. Horses. And Oscar was certainly more... something, granted not magical, than Zero. Bigger? Less homicidal? Something...
Oscar lived in a straight stall - you don't see them much anymore. When he wasn't being ridden or let out to graze, he basically stood there. His manger was in front of him; he could twist around a bit; he could move forward and backward a few feet. It's possible, though I don't remember it, that he could lay down - I've seen some horses manage it in a straight stall.
The ponies were also in straight stalls; but being smaller they were able to turn and look out into the aisle, watch what was going on. For Oscar it was just too narrow for him to turn around.
It was however, wide enough for a girl or two to squeeze in next to him and brush him - which is what Cherry and I did one day. I was on Oscar's left side, near his shoulders; Cherry was on his right, near his rump. Karen being late to the party, was straddling the half-wall separating Oscar's stall from the next horse (I think it was Little Dick) on the same side as I, behind me and to my right. The wall to the right was a full wall - his stall was next to the tackroom. Oscar was probably dozing - I think life in the straight stall didn't offer him too much to get excited about.
I don't know why, but Karen apparently decided that she couldn't really brush him from the wall, so decided to hop on his back.
Her plan, not well thought out, was of course poorly executed. Squatting, balanced on the balls of her feet, teetering, with her left hand holding the post that the stall door was hung on, she tried to launch herself onto his back and swing her left leg over him.
But she was off-balance: instead of her leg going over his back she kicked him - pretty hard - right in the kidneys.
A horse generally will try to run away from anything scary or painful. Oscar, dozing only moments before, found himself being attacked - probably soon to be disemboweled - with nowhere to go. His only choice was to defend himself; jaws agape, he turned towards the monster on his left side.
And there I stood, happily currying his shoulder, humming.
A huge bug-eyed, curled-lip, bared-teeth, roman-nosed yellow head snaked at me, a blur of fear and anger and of course, teeth: I know I'm repeating myself with the teeth thing, but they were pretty memorable. He bit me right in the cheek. On my face. If I look for it I can still find the scar.
My mother was appalled: to add insult to injury, she made me get a tetanus shot.
It was a while before I forgave Karen for that incident.
I have at least one more Oscar story before I move on to Little Dick and Jetty. If you read this earlier, and you're confused about the new title: I decided to change it since this story doesn't even mention Buzz. The next Oscar story will.
Oh, by the way:
Just in case you don't realize it: we were doing a really stupid thing. We did a lot of stupid things. When I look back on it, it's a wonder I survived some of the stupid things we did.
Just saying.
