A couple of buddies of mine from Montana, Scott and John, drove over here to Oregon in the fall of 2005 to pick up a horse. Since they were going to be in town for a few days I asked them if they’d like to go ride horses on the beach at Pacific City.  Being that Montana doesn’t have much beach riding opportunities, they were pretty jazzed to go!

Well we had a couple of extra horses so we loaded up 5 good Quarter horses, Badger, Commet, Bug, Pitch and Himmie and headed out to Pacific City.

It was a nice day to ride and those Montana boys were sure enjoying the beach! We’d been riding about an hour or so when I looked down the beach and saw this vehicle stuck in the sand and this poor guy trying to get it out while his wife’s gunning the engine and not budging. This guy is putting tree limbs and driftwood and whatever else he could find under the tires to try to get a little traction, but nothing was working.

Well if you know me you also know I never go riding without a rope on my saddle. So I mention to everyone riding that we should go pull those poor stuck people out of the sand. My daughter, who also happens to be riding with us, just laughs and says “You’re not serious??!!”

I tell her that yes, I am darn serious! We all rode up to those stuck people and everyone in my group was just laughing at me. I asked those folks if they would like to be pulled out and the man laughs at me and says “Sure.”

I tell the man that we’ll pull him out with our horses if he lets Scott drive and he seemed pretty agreeable with this arrangement. Then he started laughing again and as you may have noticed, I got laughed at quite a bit on this adventure.

Scott, who was riding a colt of mine, gets off his horse and gets behind the wheel of the stuck vehicle to do the driving. Luckily my son Jason was riding his horse Commit. This is a horse that doesn’t have any quit in him and will pull whatever you hook him up to. I was riding my horse Badger and he is basically about the same – hook him to something and he won’t stop pulling until you make him quit.

So the couple who were stuck stepped out of the way and Scott hooked my rope and Jason’s rope to the vehicle. We got the ropes tight and Scott got in the vehicle and said he was ready. Commit and Badger started pulling and Scott started helping by doing a little pushing himself from the driver’s side. We ended up pulling that vehicle out of the sand and right over the top of the hill. Needless to say, that couple, who happened to be visiting from Florida, were darn happy and although everyone was laughing, no one was laughing at me anymore!

When we were riding off I mentioned how it would have sure been nice to have gotten some pictures of that. John pipes-up and says he took a bunch of pictures and that just made my day – I couldn’t wait to get home and see how they came out.

When I finally saw those pictures, I got the last laugh. I sure do hope the people we pulled out that day get to see these pictures. And if you’re reading this right now, feel free to contact me and I’ll gladly send you some copies!

Have fun riding,