Page 17 - ISI_153_AugustSeptember

AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2019 • IDAHO SENIOR INDEPENDENT
4-H kids, teaching some of the old ways and
how best to work with horses.
But he finds that most of them don’t have
the patience to learn the traditional ways.
“I worry about our young people, the
pressures they have on them. They spend
their time sitting side-by-side, texting one
another instead of talking,” he said. “Will
they be able to handle conflicts or interac-
tions with other people?”
The proper treatment of horses is very
important to Wadley. “My dad had some of
the best cutting horses there were, and he
never put a bit in their mouth,” he said. “We
never rode with bits. I still don’t. If you watch
them on TV, they’ve always got their mouths
full. How would you like to have your mouth
pulled open every time you wanted to turn
or stop? I use a horsehair neck rope and just
barely tap them.”
Wadley was once involved with a “little
old mare” in Korea, a horse known as Old
Reckless. She is the number-one war horse
in history, having received two purple hearts.
One war-time event was particularly
precarious.
“The guys that had her were firing 75mm
direct support over our heads as we were trying
to retake Outpost Vegas,” said Wadley. “Old
Reckless made 51 trips that day and night.”
She toted ammunition in one direc-
tion and carried injured marines
coming back, for a total of 35
treacherous miles, according to
the men’s calculations.
“The planes flew
over dropping big
candles, chutes
12 feet wide,
and I could see that mare come in and out
on the ridge line,” said Wadley. “It was real
spooky, and I thought there had to be an angel
riding that mare.”
But Old Reckless traveled alone.
“The guys at the ammo bunker would load
her, and she’d turn around and head back up
that ridge with all that crap coming in,”said
Wadley. “I never saw anything like it. I figured
she’s a dead horse.”
During those months in Korea, the
marines would spend time on the hillside
using their bayonets to cut grass as forage
for Old Reckless.
“She also developed a liking for the
C-rations the marines were eating, including
scrambled powdered eggs and little pound
cakes—whatever the guys ate,” said Wadley.
“She evidently had a sweet tooth.”
After the armistice in 1953, Old Reckless
returned from Korea. The date was November
10, the day of the Marine Corps’ birthday.
An officer and a couple of others who had
been with her in Korea met her at the docks.
According to Wadley, the men took her with
them to the hotel, and she went right in the
elevator with them and up to the 10th floor.
“The first thing she did was to go over
and take a big bite out of the cake,” he said.
Apparently the sweet tooth still remained.
That “little old mare” returned to Camp
Pendleton in 1953, where she was promoted
to Staff Sergeant and remained until her death
in 1968.
After the war, Wadley began work for the
U.S. Forest Service, working in New Mexico,
Colorado, Wyoming, and Idaho.
He retired as the St.Maries
District Ranger after 12 years.
Soon after that he began work
with 4-H groups.
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Horses are certainly his thing, particularly
when it comes to making an initial connection
with a young horse.
He imprints colts before they’re born.
Wadley calls the process “spirit blend-
ing foals.”
“Starting about six months before birth,
in their third trimester, you place your hands
underneath, on the milk vein, and on the other
side a little bit of tension,” he said. “You can
feel movement, and you talk into the flank like
a horse talks to a foal even in uterus. When
they’ve foaled, I’m right there with them.
When the mare foals, we’d sit there quietly
and let her talk to it first.
“She’ll hu-hu-hu like a mare does, and the
little guy will raise his head and sometimes
nicker. Then, within a snap of a finger after
she does, I talk to it the same way I have all
those months before. It turns that little head
to me and nickers. It never, ever, forgets it.
My horses, as far as I hoop, they’ll answer.”
According to Wadley, it’s a traditional
Indian way, particularly with Kiowa and
Cherokee people.
He boasts one could do most anything with
the horses in his family.
“You can touch them all over. If you get
knocked off they’ll do anything to not step on
you,” he said. “I’ll go out at night and hop on
them in the dark, and they’re just glad to see
you. If I go out to work, doing things, they’ll
come out, stand, and want to help you.” ISI
In 2003 Harold published the book Spirit Blending
Foals Before and After Birth, An Old Way Continued.
Veterinarian Robert M. Miller calls it “the best book on
horsemanship ever written.”
PHOTO BY JACKIE MCNEEL