Bob and Bo

Petersburg, Virginia. The summer of 1998.

You would think that the Amish might treat their animals better.

The National Park Service, specifically Petersburg National Battlefield, purchased several horses for our show. Among them are two large Belgian Quarter Horses bought from the Amish, “Bob” and “Bo.” Their bodies are covered with marks and scars- clear signs of abuse. They both have bad spots of what looks to be black skin, smooth to the touch, where no hair has grown back after they suffered a nasty wound. My supervisor tells me that they were in much worse shape when the Park Service first acquired them a few years ago.

Anyway, in this job I get to work with horses, and I wear suspenders every morning.

I am studying history at Western Carolina University, and my academic advisor and mentor at the school has taken a special interest in me. He is fast becoming one of the foremost authors and historians on the Civil War, and he knows just about everyone in the Park Service at the Civil War battlefields in Virginia. Thanks to him, I have a summer job in Petersburg as a Park Ranger, complete with housing provided by the Park Service.

I work on the cannon crew at the battlefield. We dress as a Confederate artillery soldiers, and hook a Napoleon cannon and caisson to a team of horses, ride into battle for the crowd, and fire a blank black power round. We then perform a mortar demonstration, where we fire a live round that lands down range about 300 yards. After the show is over, we answer questions from the crowd.

Before the first show each morning, though, we have to feed the horses and get them harnessed up. I wear my wool pants and my white shirt with suspenders, along with the authentic shoes of the era. But in what is often 100 degree heat, I of course wait until it is time to ride to put on my wool coat and red cap of the artillery.

Bob and Bo are the biggest horses we have, and they do the brunt of the work pulling the cannon and gear. In front of them on the team are “Hobson” and “Chance.” Chance is built like a race horse, but he suffers from asthma and we can only feed him a limited amount of hay. He needs to eat green grass. Hobson basically just lived in a lady’s back yard his whole life before the Park Service bought him, and he has the most personality of any horse I have ever seen.

Bob and Bo know the drill. We put their saddle blankets across their backs, then the saddle itself, followed by the collar, the hames, the breech straps, and then the traces. For the breech straps, I actually have to lift up their tail and loop the leather strap around it. Before I do this, I always touch the horse on his side and rub down to his back, so that he can feel where I am and I do not surprise him when I lift up his tail. Usually, the horse tenses his muscles to make it hard for me work the leather strap around its tail, but who can blame him? The skin underneath the tail is a common area where the leather strap will rub a sore.

The last thing we put on is the bit, which lodges against the horse’s upper gum.

Bo in particular has this trick where he will inflate his belly with air when I am attaching the saddle. You will think that the saddle is tight enough, but then the rider might slide right off once we get going. What I have to do is tighten the saddle, then come back and few minutes later and tighten it again, to catch him by surprise.

On this morning, we are running a little late getting the horses ready. I put on Bo’s saddle and tighten the girth strap. Bo has his stomach extended as far as he can, and he is also moving around to make things harder for me.

I lose my patience with him, and I give him a quick pop on the cheek of his mouth.

I have never seen an animal react in such a way. Bo audibly gasps, his eyes go wide with fear, and his body becomes rigid. I can see in his eyes the flashback to the beatings he took at the hands of the Amish.

“Bo, I am sorry,” I say. I pet him on his neck and rub his side to try to get him to calm down. “I will never hit you again.”

He eventually relaxes a little, but I can tell that the psychological damage to him is worse than it is for Bob. Bo will never trust people after the Amish, no matter how well he is treated. Bob, on the other hand, still has some curiosity and will give me amusing looks from time to time.

After watching Bo’s reaction to my tiny slap, though, I always make it a point to be the one who dresses Bo in the mornings, to go a little gentler with him than the other guys might be in putting the gear on the horses.