Friday, May 29, 2009

The Lone Ranger Rides Again!

He apparently stopped for a visit in Bryson City. One of the main attractions of our little town is the Great Smoky Mountain Railway. Trips leave out from our little Depot and head into the Nantahala River area. It's quite popular with the tourist set. As such we have Thomas The Train in town occasionally and at Christmas the Polar Express makes a stop too. Imagine my surprise when Wy and I drove through town today on our picture taking adventure (love the new Nikon d90) and this is what we saw....
The Lone Ranger Trailer...
and where the trailer is you of course find....
The Lone Ranger himself...
who I did not realize is a slightly paunchy
short guy in his 50's....
Of course Silver was there too.
That was the real reason I stopped.
I'm all about the horse of course.
Wy had to get an up close view. He really was beautiful,
and big!
I myself had to of course take a trip to see him. I found out that he is a Tennessee Walker, which I figured because of his size, he was a whopping 17.2 hands...A beautiful white. Very calm and behaved, even with the general noise of being in the middle of town, he looked almost bored.
Then I noticed a couple of things that brought my impression of his owner down a couple of notches. Up close you can see that he is missing alot of hair on his face and as being white he is susceptible to sunburn, which he had. Even though he was currently under a roof, he clearly wasn't using any sort of product to help protect the skin. Then there was this.....it looks like sores, possibly from hobbles, as they were in the same spot on both legs. I don't know how observant this guy was but it's hard to miss bloody spots on such a white animal. Otherwise he looked to be in good health. Good body weight and all that. I just might write a letter to the local paper about the Railway hiring someone who could obviously do a better job of caring for his animal. I won't be the only one to notice this or be upset by it. He's due to make a stop back in town in August....I'll have to see if he's doing a better job....

7 comments:

Pony Girl said...

That is one big horse! You are observant, but any horse lover/owner would probably notice the same things, I know they would have bothered me, too! What exact did this Lone Ranger do on/with his horse? Tricks or something?

kellie said...

Poor horse. Great pictures. I always look forward to your posts. I wish I were in NC!

Dar

colleen said...

He was there doing a show with the train.. The Lone Ranger vs the Ghost rider or something like that. I'm not completely sure.

The Pink Geranium or Jan's Place said...

gotta admit ..running into the Lone Ranger had to be exciting.. my better half would of loved seeing him!

Cant wait to see more pix from your cool new camera.. I see in Consumer Report the Nikon D90 got the best rating!

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

I wonder if those sores are from the common (though horrible) technique that some TW owners do to their horses, called soring, to cause their horses to high step so pretty?
You can google it and see what I'm talking about.

I agree about the sunscreen, too. He does look painful in the face.

And I thought that Silver was a palomino horse?
This Silver was obviously named that because he is literally dripping in silver! He has so much silver on him that it's almost impossible to see the horse. lol!

And a short Lone Ranger....with a super tall horse? Weird!

Did he seem to know how to ride well?

I'm glad you had a nice visit and shared some pics, too
~Lisa

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

I went back to look at the handsome fella and noticed his bridle and bit set up. It looks rather harsh to me. I've never seen one that attaches at the bottom like that. It looks very tight around the lips. And the strip along the middle of his face and nose looks uncomfortable, too.

I'm guessing that he acted so subdued around all those distractions is that he was hurting and under severe control. Poor guy. :(

~Lisa

DesertHen said...

Silver is a beautiful horse, but I'm going to agree with Lisa on the fact that the bridle set up looked rather harsh and the sores could be from training him to high-step! Poor Silver! He is a beauty though and under the right care, could possibly be a wonderful horse. And I find it very odd that this short lone ranger would have such a tall animal....weird! And that saddle would be very, very heavy as well...possible that the horse was drugged in order to be able to handle the weight, noise, people, etc....