Award-Winning Ranch Horse Tells All: Welcome to the County Island
Looking for the equine voice of reason in these turbulent times?
Meet Whiskey Ranch-Horse.
Are you looking for a few good horse laughs? Going stir-crazy on stall rest in these uncertain times? Wishing you could escape to a place where the horses are in charge, the feed flows freely — and everything an old ranch horse knows about life gets turned on its ear, all the time? Welcome to the County Island.
Whiskey Ranch-Horse, author of his popular County Island blog since 2010, has published his first book of short stories — County Island: True Tales From a Ranch Horse Turned Pet Pleasure Horse. It’s available both on Amazon Kindle and as a paperback. His tales are short reads filled with both fun and food for thought about our horse world and how he sees it. Prancey arena horses, stupid cow games, floppy-eared cattle dogs chasing after jackrabbits, pampered pet cows, and the bare-nekkid jogger are only a few of the wonders in Whiskey’s world.
Whiskey himself is a real, branded ranch horse who worked for a living well into his teens. He met his book translator, also known as the bucket gal, when he was sold at auction and wound up in the land of suburban ranchettes and pet pleasure horses. He’s now 32 years old and ready to impart his knowledge, wisdom and humor to those who most need it on the County Island and beyond — which, he would say, is actually everyone. He is also the 2012 Third Place Winner for Best Talking Animal in the Equestrian Social Media Awards — not bad for a horse.
Here are a few quick looks into Whiskey’s world, from the book:
One of the many idiotic pleasure-horse notions that I learned about since I got sent from the ranch to live here on the County Island is what’s called a “takin a walk break.” Right there, ya got two notions that don’t rightly go together: walkin, and takin a break. I guess it’s all part of the confusion that people and horses on the County Island got about multi-taskin …
And:
When you’re a workin horse on a ranch, you learn the true meanin of a sayin that the people got: “Pick up the slack.” The slack, for those that don’t know about such things, is literally the amount of the drape in a rope or rein that’s between you and your cowboy (or cowgirl, or bucket gal) at a given time. When a horse goes to work, he’s got to pick up the slack in order to, for instance, hold the rope right tight so his cowboy (or cowgirl, but not bucket gal) can keep a roped cow held down tight and proper for doctorin or brandin and such.
A tight rope is a good rope. It means a good horse is doin his job. One of the first lessons I learned on the ranch when I done got broke to ride was how to hold a rope steady so it ain’t got no slack at all, and how not step forward or let the slack go ‘til I was told otherwise. I can hold the biggest, orneriest steer there is merely by leanin against the slack in a rope, and I can hold ‘em steady there for the longest spell you can likely imagine.
So, when I was first arrived on the County Island, and was still sorta thinkin I must have come to live here to do some sort of purposeful work, even though what that work was weren’t immediately apparent, I was also still kinda eager to show my brand-new bucket gal the ropes, so to speak. I wanted to assure her she was now dealin with a genuine trained professional ranch horse, not just any old nag off the cattle truck …
The Kindle edition is available for $3.49 (or free with Kindle Unlimited, but as Whiskey says, “free don’t buy feed”). The paperback is $10.99.
To purchase his book, visit Amazon.com and search for “Whiskey Ranch-Horse.” To chat with Whiskey himself, visit him on Facebook as Whiskey Ranch-Horse. To enjoy more tales from the County Island, visit https://countyisland.wordpress.com/
