Should have...

...bought/trained/leased this fellow when I had the chance.  Not certain what his bloodlines were, but I know they were pretty killer.  The only reason he wasn't "worth" much was because his face didn't look as "extreme" as his parents typically produced.  He was the last on the ground from them, I do remember that.

We called him "Kicks" for the country singer Kicks Dunn of Brooks and Dunn.  He's 3 or 4 in this photo.  He was spooky as HELL in the saddle.  When I trained Stan for the endurance race Sonya trained Kicks.  You couldn't cough, sniffle, move an arm away from your body, or switch the reins from hand to hand without him losing it and bolting.  No bucking, always bolting.

This photo was the day the trainer, Bud, decided to do something about it.  Not the most humane, I knew even then, but I had no say in things six years ago.  Kicks didn't bolt nearly as frequently after though.  He only bolted when the situation actually merited something semi-scary.

Oh, and the buckskin in the background?  She looks so awful because she was a rescue.  We called her Ethiopian for the longest time because of the malnutrition commercials about kids in Ethiopia at the time.   She filled out and became quite a beautiful filly after months of care.