Runaways

Ask any old timer who has spent his life around horses and he’ll have a story to tell about the horse that spooked and ran away with him. Cowboys, farmers, loggers even retired city milk wagon drivers- they’ve all had similar mishaps. 

When you’re breaking in a young horse you expect that it might have a go at taking matters into it's own hands and running off with you.  It’s only natural; flight is the horse’s first line of defense against predators with bucking coming a close second. 

It’s the unexpected that throws you for a loop, like when that old team of nags that you have been driving through all kinds of scary conditions for several years, for no apparent reason, takes a bad spell and suddenly bolts and drags you and whatever you’re riding in down the road at breakneck speeds. If you're lucky you might get them stopped and under control before too much of your rig has rattled to pieces or ended

upside down in a ditch.

My father was full of advice about how to handle these situations. “Let the bastards run, he would say, and when they get tired and start to slow down whip their asses and keep them going. Drive the buggers 'till they nearly drop. They’ll think twice about trying that trick again.”

That would have been good advice and if I had been living on the prairies where my dad had learned his trade, out where he had miles of straight open road or vast areas of open Saskatchewan grass land to work with. But I wasn't. My stables were situated in a park in the heart of Metropolitan Toronto and much of the time I had my horses and carriages out on the busy city streets. When things went wrong in that environment the consequences could be horrible. Intentionally letting a team run off their fear was not an option. The streets were too full of pedestrians, buses, streetcars  and other traffic.

Back in the days when horses were the main mode of transportation in our big cities traffic fatalities were almost exclusively due to runaway horses. The newspapers at the time were full of accounts of horses running amuck and charging through the streets dragging disintegrating buggies full of women and children. These events were so common that big city policemen were, as part of their training, given special instruction on how to deal with them. Awards of valor were frequently given to cops and private citizens for successfully intervening and saving the day but there were just as many stories about men who had died in the attempt. It was a terrible way to die; men were often impaled by pointed shaft ends or wagon tongues, crushed under heavy wooden spoke wheels, or pounded to a pulp under steel shod hooves. 

No, it was no laughing matter, which, when I look back at the times when I found myself in these hazardous situations, is why I wonder why all I can remember are the funny aspects.

For example there was the time I decided to take my team and democrat buggy along a very busy city thoroughfare to pick up a girl I had been trying to date at the office building where she worked.

I had been unsuccessful in all previous attempts to get her attention and was leaning heavily on the shock value of this latest ploy. I figured she would have to be pretty hard hearted not to respond to what I had in mind. When she came out of her office at the end of the day I would be waiting, all spiffed up and sitting flowers in hand in a fancy rig behind a pair of prancing horses. You couldn’t get more romantic than that. 

She had been playing really hard to get but I figured that if I could get her into that buggy and back down the road to my stables and bachelor pad and then I might get the green light. 

I know it sounds crass but she had been so unaccountably standoffish that I felt duty bound to defend my reputation.

When she found me waiting for her, she was still a bit reluctant to join me, but then she saw several of the women she worked with swooning around the horses and looking like they would willingly take her place so she threw caution to the wind and climbed up in the seat beside me. 

Yes! My plan was working and we set off at a brisk trot heading south on Leslie Avenue with me brandishing my whip and her clutching her posies.

For the uninitiated to understand what happened next I will have to digress and explain a bit about the mechanics of horse drawn vehicles.

Like any other vehicle it’s essential that a buggy should have the means of going forward, backing up and stopping. It’s the last of these requirements that I fell afoul of almost immediately. Without becoming too technical I should explain that the main component of the stopping apparatus on these horse drawn vehicles is a device known as a neck yoke. Put simply, the neck yoke is a short cross bar of wood perched at the end of the buggy tongue. It’s hooked to the horse’s collar and then a series of straps and buckles winds around the horse’s butt and causes the vehicle to stop when the horse does. 

Therein lay the problem.

I had been so anxious to make a dashing impression on the lady in question that I was a little too exuberant with my whip so the horses made a bit of an extra strong lunge forward as we swung on to the main drag and headed for the park.

No problem I thought turning and smiling confidently at my companion while hauling back on the reins to slow the team down. 

I could tell she was starting to respond to my efforts to woo her and for a few seconds our eyes met and we stared longingly at each other while I thought fondly of the candles and wine waiting at my tender trap. But then something went awry. The horses weren’t responding to the several sharp tugs I had given on the reins. When I looked forward to see what was going on the spell was broken. My ardor melted away and was replaced with panic and cold fear. The leather strap that held the neck yoke to the end of the tongue had snapped and now there was nothing to stop the buggy crashing into the horse’s rear ends, which now it was doing. 

Each time it hit the horses they became more frightened and increased their speed. When I hauled on the reins I just made the buggy slam into the horses all the harder so all I could do was sit there with the reins held limply in my hands and hope for divine intervention.

Within seconds the horses were totally out of control and going full tilt down the road with the buggy periodically slamming into their asses and egging them on. 

I knew what could happen and I was consumed with terror but when I glanced over at my passenger she seemed oblivious and just sat smiling like she was enjoying the whole thing. She thought this Ben Hurr esc. performance was part of my attempt to impress her. 

Within a minute or two we were insight of the entrance to the park but we were going so fast that I knew that we could never negotiate the turn safely so I gave the horse their heads and we galloped past. 

It was only a short distance to where the road we were on ended at Eglington Avenue, a large main street, where I knew I would have a better chance of turning the corner without flipping over, provided I didn’t crash into any of the busy traffic that was flying in both directions through the intersection. 

Taking the reins in one hand I swung my arm around my companion and pulled her in as close to me as possible. I needed all the weight on my side of the buggy to keep it from flipping over. She still seemed very calm  and even snuggled in closer than I intended. She still had no idea of the danger we were in and I guess she was assuming I was trying to get to second base. 

We hit the corner at breakneck speed with sparks flying from the horse’s shoes, the steel wheels of the buggy skidding sideways on the tarmac and pedals and leaves flying from my passengers bouquet. Somehow, I guess somebody up there likes me, we made it around the corner and fate provided a large gradual incline on the road in front of us. 

Now I was able to pull on the reins without the buggy hitting the horses and gradually got them to slow down and eventually stopped.

I made a temporary repair to the neck yoke with a bit of wire I had in the buggy and with me still badly shaken we took an alternate route back to my stables.

God does punish the wicked because as it turned out, as the evening wore on and we shared each others company the lady, so impressed and stimulated by the events of the afternoon, became totally compliant and was ready to grant me my every wish. 

I, however, was so shaken, stressed, and traumatized that I was not able to reciprocate in any meaningful fashion.