

Jasper,
If I knew how to paint, or if it had occurred to me to make the effort to learn, I would have painted you – I probably would have given you a dish face like most Arabians have, but that wouldn’t have been fair to you – so I would have given you that rounded face, whatever is the word that is opposite of dish – bowl? And that narrow chest of yours. I would have included that in my painting but … the thing is, what made you so spectacular as a horse was not in a still image, it was in moving – how ungodly smooth you were at a trot and a lope and a gallop. It was like riding a magic carpet. You made me look like a far better rider than I was. And – your ability to separate cattle. Intelligent. Observant. Immediate. Aware. All of it, coming from what Lee Vinson had spent years breeding: cutting horse Arabians. The fact that when he first laid eyes on you, he saw an ugly colt and said, “Get this horse off the property as soon as possible,” did not mean his breeding was missing, just the good looks.
My best, most vivid memory of your cutting horse ability was that day when Roger Davis and I had given up on our separating job. We had separated all the calves and mothers from the cows that hadn’t had any calves that year and were on their way to market. But there was still one calf in that bunch because neither of us could tell which cow was the calf’s mother.
We were pushing the herd of market bound cows through a barbed wire gate when I saw a cow twitch her ear and a calf twitch its ear in reply. A slight press from my legs to Jasper’s sides and he stepped in front of them, we separated the cow and her calf from the ones without calves. Roger wasn’t one to praise lightly but he said, “Nice job Nance.” And well he should have. But he also should have said, “Nice one, Jasper.”