If you never used the rump of a very large horse as a diving board, then you missed one of life’s more interesting events, especially when it involved swimming in a snake-infested stock pond or creek. Trying to clamber aboard – sans stairs or ladder – a water-soaked shuffling horse was difficult enough, but just when you were perched and positioned to launch into the stream, the horse moved, and you either fell into the stream or on the ground. One such animal on our farm was Maude, our workhorse. Maude served all kinds of other functions for our family in addition to carrying about a ½ dozen of us to the swimming hole and serving as a diving board.
The reader would have had to see Maude’s huge feet and matching size, but take it from me; Maude was the biggest animal around. I don’t know for certain Daddy’s objective when he traded for her, but he sure got more than he bargained for. We were told that Maude had been working in the logging woods for some time, but we never confirmed this rumor. In any event, she had huge, muscled hindquarters. The distance from the ground to her front shoulder nearly equaled the distance from her tail to her front shoulders; she had a rectangular box shape. Maude had straight legs, and after studying physics I know they transferred the power in her hindquarters straight to the ground. We never weighed Maude, but she had to weigh about 1,500 lbs. Additionally, Maude had the personality of a high-powered racehorse, and Mack (brother) often rode her Indian-style (no saddle would have fit her girth) on the weekend. When any of Mack’s friends wanted to race their little cow ponies, particularly over rough terrain for a ¼ mile or so, he was quick to oblige. Maude was also eager to race, and Mack’s friends got more action than they imagined possible. I don’t know if she ever lost a race, except perhaps on short flat raceways, and even then it was neck-and-neck to the finish line.
The trouble most family members had with Maude resulted from the fact that she was poorly suited for the jobs we had. We had plowing and lightweight wagon pulling primarily, but these jobs were nothing to a logging horse, and Maude didn’t cotton too much to doing them. Maude was a bonafide logging horse, and not in the least bit docile. Her demeanor probably worked quite well for logging, but we needed a horse to pull a plow. Instead, we had a high-strung, unusually big, strong horse that was born to do heavy lifting. When presented with a plow to pull, by comparison to a log, Maude toyed with anyone holding the reins, usually my brother, Robert or Daddy. In modern times, animal psychologists would propose that Maude was insulted by trivial pursuits such as farm labor.
Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I know what kind of animal Daddy should have looked for to pull a plow – an easy-going horse with a gentle personality. A horse that would not be easily upset by clanging noises or general antagonism would have been perfect for plowing our small farm. It was certainly the case that we didn’t need an animal with giant feet, implements of destruction that could smash plants to smithereens in a small garden site, and it would have helped if the animal possessed long legs to step over, rather than on, things in front of them. Maude had pretty long legs, but the hooves on the ends of her legs were the problem; a good guess would put her hooves at 10 to 12 inches in diameter. Maude’s hooves had never been shod with iron shoes. In contrast, most farm horses possessed slightly developed hindquarters and had slender legs and small hooves.
When you need to pull some log out of the woods you needed an animal, or animals, that would rise to intense athletic challenges and wouldn’t quit on the job. In case the reader never thought about it, a logging horse needed to pull a log through brush with limbs and briars flapping their flanks and face. Moreover the log had to be pulled over or around standing and fallen trees, and this took skill and strength for both the horse and driver. Since the loggers worked year round, weather could be a factor or the ground would be marshy and slick. The terrain could be hilly and almost never was a wide-open space. Maude qualified as a logging horse on all fronts, and she never quite learned how to be a gentle soul at plowing time. Unfortunately we had more plowing than logging, and Maude was a challenge for the entire family – hard to catch and harder to handle once caught.
In case you were wondering why power was needed to pull a log out of the woods, hardwoods weigh from 37-45 lbs/ft3, and a 16’ red oak log roughly 1.2 feet in diameter might have weighed @ 750 lbs. I don’t know for certain, but in a logging camp the latter would probably be considered a small log. However, this was the typical size and type we cut for firewood, and it was blunt cut on both ends – not exactly amenable to dragging it through the brush. Normally, we didn’t have Maude pull a log very far, if at all. If she did pull a log, it was a short distance to a clearing where we had set up to saw and split the log into firewood. Afterwards, the firewood was loaded on our two-wheeled wagon, and if we stacked it thoroughly, the load was worthy of Maude’s ability. This only happened a few times each year. I suspect that Maude enjoyed the challenge of pulling the load of firewood, but her joy was unmatched by the joy of those holding her reins. Compare the latter task to pulling a sharpened steel turning plow weighing perhaps 150 lbs through a depth of 12 inches in garden soil, and you can quickly understand that pulling a plow was child’s play for such a horse.
Somewhere toward the end of Maude’s stay with our family, Maude mated with a local rodeo stud horse, and the female offspring had some qualities of both parents – long legs, muscled body and a feisty spirit. I don’t know whether it was the combination of having to deal with Maude and her colt or whether it was the decreasing interest in farming, but one Saturday when I was about 8 Daddy hitched Maude to the two-wheel cart, leashed the overgrown colt to the back, and went to town. In town, he traded the entire assembly for a little retired rodeo pony with the oxymoronic name of Tarzan. Tarzan had a hard time pulling a dead limb to the house, much less a load of firewood, and he couldn’t run fast for more than 50 yards. We never even bothered to try plowing with Tarzan. Things were never the same around the Fodge’s household after the ignominious disposal of Maude.
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