01/12/06 Wasp two

Wasp II Even quiet, good-natured horses can have a mind of their own. I'm Jeff Keane I'll be back in one minute to tell you about one. Yesterday I told you about Wasp, a ranch-raised horse that became a steady and reliable working horse with a laid back attitude that would get the job done day after day. We had roped a lot of cattle on him in the pasture and had roped and pulled a lot of calves in the corral on branding day so he seemed like the best choice to take to the roping arena when I started team roping. Although he wasn't real fast I figured he would work on the type of cattle we were roping at the time. Well sometimes what you figure and what happens just isn't the same thing. Wasp had his own ideas about team roping  he did not like it, but true to form he didn't fight it or throw a fit in the roping box. He just rebelled in his passive way by crow hoping all the way down the arena while I was trying to rope. It's just a touch hard to get much roping timing established at that particular gait. No amount of various discipline or retraining had any effect on Wasp's attitude. During the week working cattle in the pasture I could rope at anything down any rocky, steep hill and Wasp would give his all; but in the arena he had a definite aversion to roping. None of the other ropers and horsemen that watched Wasp ever figured out a reason. Maybe there wasn't enough rocks and sagebrush in that flat arena or maybe he thought roping steers for fun was silly and he really wanted his weekends off. Wasp never became a team roping horse. I'm Jeff Keane.