(“Jesus wept.”)
(A true story. All identities have been changed in my retelling) Imagine you’re a sensitive horse owner who is fiercely loyal to and protective of a horse—we’ll call him Strauss—who has just earned you your USDF Bronze Medal. Out of the blue a former owner, Jane, (once removed from whom you bought him) FaceBooks you to chat about him. You (direct quote from FB) “lay it on thick about how wonderful he did in the show ring, all his awards, Regionals, Nationals, that he did a great job at Third this summer, what a wonderful horse he was, etc. She responded by telling me what a hard time she had collecting him, that she actually tied him with a long rope to a bulldozer to make him collect! I did not answer. I was horrified, almost in tears– Jesus wept (one of my grandfather’s favorite curses for when something was really bad).”
And you conclude: “What a remarkable temperament he has to have survived that and remain such a sweet, sweet boy!”
The intermediate owner passes all this information along to me, and knowing the suspected culprit fairly well, I respond that there has to have been a miscommunication if for no other reason (besides the unlikelihood of using an earthmover as a training aid for a green horse) than that Jane doesn’t even own a bulldozer.
A few weeks later I found myself at Jane’s farm to give a clinic, and through her husband I heard a different version of Strauss’ early history:
A guy named Oxford had a wife, a family, and for whatever reason a farm/ranch with quite a few horses. One day with no warning, as the story was related to me, the wife took the kid and up and left—gonzo. Oxford hung on for a while but not being a horseman, everything went downhill in a hurry, and he simply had to get rid of the horses. The word was put out in the community, and an informal horse rescue party was formed, Oxford said to Jane and the others, “Take the horses, but when you pick them up, they’ll all just be tied. They’ve broken too much fencing for me to be able to turn them out.”
So when they went to COLLECT the horses
col·lect1
kəˈlekt/verb
verb: collect; 3rd person present: collects; past tense: collected; past participle: collected; gerund or present participle: collecting
1. bring or gather together (things, typically when scattered or widespread). “he went around the office collecting old coffee cups” synonyms: gather, accumulate, assemble; More amass, stockpile, pile up, heap up, store (up), hoard, save; mass, accrue “They collected the rubbish;’ distribute accumulate and store over a period of time. “collect rainwater to use on the garden”
2. call for and take away; fetch.”the children were collected from school” synonyms: fetch, go/come to get, call for, meet “I must collect the children.”
they found them tethered by long ropes, in Strauss’ case to an available piece of heavy equipment, specifically a bulldozer. Despite their concerns, he turned out to be amiable and easy to load. Jane took him home and because of the owner’s name, called him Oxford who eventually became Strauss.
So the story Jane was trying to tell his new owner was that she drove her trailer to the guy’s farm to rescue Oxford, i.e.: collect him to bring him to his new home, and found him tied to the bulldozer. It had nothing to do with any kind of training at all.
When Jane learned of the misunderstanding, she became very defensive. Hackles up, she announced to me, “I’d never have written anything like that on FaceBook. Here, I’ll show you!” Marching me to her computer, she dialed up the FB conversation, and as she read it aloud, became much less bellicose. In a small voice she concluded, “I guess I did say I collected him tied to a bulldozer. But I meant . . .”