Lol.
Not me. Any horse a'tall is better than being on foot. Cows are too smart and mean.
I had a tiny Shetland pony, shining white. She was a true hellbitch. She bucked every person who ever rode her off, pretty much every time she was ridden. Except me, because my legs were long enough I could just plant them on either side of her and almost lift her off the ground. She didn't like that.
She did use my lap as a loading ramp, however, when I was loading her into a trailer once. Charming.
Shetlands are just mean anyways. We used to have a horse, it wasn't a shetland. It was a little bigger, but it had the poor temperament that those small breeds have.
I've just watched too many inept horsemen run cattle through fences. Unless you have people that are good with horses, rounding up cattle on horseback is dubious. It's kind of a nostalgic memory for me having grown up on a farm. I think I saw the tail end of the real "cowboys" as a child (at least for my part of the world). They were they guys from the World War II generation who grew up on horses and could ride and rope with the best of them. When we worked livestock, we generally used a head-shoot. However, occasionally, we could find a header and a heeler to rope the cows in the pin and work them from the horses and it was so much more efficient. Those guys are all gone now and I guess that piece of Americana is too. My father can't rope, and I sure as hell can't either.
I used to be a fairly good on a horse, but I've been bucked off, thrown, and tossed more times than I care to remember. The worst was when my horse just decided to run me off. You know what I am talking about? When a horse decides they are going to gallop and buck until you are off of their back? I didn't have the good sense to reign her in and turn her into circles to calm her down. She just did it to be a bitch too. There wasn't a bur in her saddle and I wasn't running her hard too hard, tugging her reigns or any of the other things that drive horses crazy.
I am just not a horse fan. Of course, we were more of farmers than ranchers, so we were always more concerned with efficiency. Eventually we just started using cattle cubes and got to the point where we could call the cattle in with a horn.
It only took us ten years to figure that out.
Anyways, sorry for the nostalgia.
