Snoopy Do And Me | A Story Of A Quarter Horse

By: Lynda Webber

As a shy and painfully self-conscious sixteen-year-old who had not yet learned to appreciate the benefits of blossoming to almost 5’9” in her stocking feet, I felt awkward around my peers and had few friends. School was a form of social torture, but I tolerated it with resignation because when the bell rang at the end of the day or when the weekend finally came, I had another life. I lived solely to ride.

Snoopy Do was his name, a burnished blood-bay Quarter Horse with a proud arch to his neck and a buzz-cut mane that made him appear as noble as a Trojan horse. Dad had bought him for $300 as a seven-year-old, from a hoss-trader who lived down the road, and although I knew nothing of his history I just knew he was a special horse.

Whenever I could sneak away for a “joy ride,” I would heave the big old roping saddle dad had bought me onto Snoopy’s powerful back and we would gallop with sheer elation down the piney Alabama backroads. Together, I just knew the two of us were invincible.

I found our lifetime calling the day dad took my sister and I to a local rodeo. As the barrel racers tore fearlessly into the arena on their powerful steeds with cries of “Hyaaaa, Scout!!” “GO, Red!!!” “C’MON, Prince!!!,” I raptly watched through tears of adrenaline-charged emotion and swore to myself that someday, I would be a barrel racer too.

As luck would have it, some neighbors down the road were into team penning, and they allowed me to set some old barrels up in their arena. I scoured all my back-issues of Western Horseman for training tips, and the first couple times I took Snoop into the arena it was just to walk and trot the pattern. It soon became evident, however, that he had played this game before. I discovered this when — just for the heck of it — I asked him to run the pattern right at the end of one of our early sessions. Expecting to take the first barrel wide, I almost ate dirt when Snoop charged out confidently and cut it on a dime. If I thought that was a fluke, I realized he knew exactly what he was doing when he took the last two barrels the same way. “Whoa!” I said to myself in awe, “I’ve got myself a barrel horse!”

Towards the end of that summer a flyer appeared advertising a rodeo at the local saddle club, and suddenly I had a purpose. Snoop and I continued to practice faithfully for the next few weeks, and before I knew it the Big Event finally arrived. My parents hauled Snoop out to the rodeo grounds in our old homemade cattle trailer, and my hands shook with stage-fright as I saddled him with his big old roper. I decided to take him out into the arena for a practice run just before the rodeo started, and he could sense my anxiety. Jigging sideways, we stepped through the open gate to the arena and I paused for minute to catch my breath. “HYAAAA, SNOOP!!!” I suddenly cried, in good barrel-racing tradition. My steed leapt into the air and hit the ground running hard. He rounded the first barrel like he’d been born to it, took the second and third barrels flawlessly, and then we hit the home stretch. The adrenaline rush left me breathless and teary-eyed.

“Hey, girlie!” hollered a toothless old feller hanging over the fence, pausing for a moment to spit out a mouthful of chaw, “I’m gonna bet my money on that hoss o’ your’n tonight! He’s the champeen!” Instead of boosting my confidence, the old feller’s statement had the opposite effect. What was I thinking?? There was no way I’d be lucky enough to make another run like that one!

My position in the lineup was somewhere towards the end of about thirty other horses. All during the wait I felt a heavy sense of dread as I realized that of the two of us, my horse was the only one who really knew what he was doing.

Suddenly the announcer boomed our number over the P.A. system. It was showtime. I nudged Snoop forward towards the gate but he tossed his head in the air with a snort, rolled his eyes, and began to jig in place like the knob on a pressure cooker. We were doomed. “Oh, Snoop, please don’t do this,” I pleaded.

“C’mon, gal, let’s get that hoss out there before he goes off like a firecracker,” said a voice somewhere down below me. A grinning cowboy grabbed hold of Snoop’s headstall, led him through the gate — still jigging and prancing – and swatted him on the rump.

Snoopy Do exploded into the brightly-lit arena with a vengeance and charged his first target like a runaway freight train. I clamped down hard on the horn as he leaned into the barrel — oh so close — circled it and sped away with wings on his feet towards the next. Not missing a beat, he wrapped around it with an inch to spare and, pushing off powerfully from his mighty back end, he headed for the last barrel as if his tail were on fire. My heart was in my throat as the last barrel loomed large, and then we were around it and sprinting down the stretch towards the gate on a blast of adrenaline. “HYAAAAA, SNOOP, HYAAAAA!!!” I bellowed mindlessly.

Then we were blowing through the gate, and the run was over. “I knowed that thar hoss was a champeen!” a vaguely familiar voice cackled from the sidelines. I peered through the bright lights towards the timer in disbelief… Snoop had taken us to first place by a wide margin, and now that it was over, I was completely zapped… short-circuited. I watched with almost dazed disinterest as the last few competitors had their runs, but they never came close to Snoopy’s time that night.

Still dazed, I noted that the crowd was actually cheering for us as Snoopy Do and I cantered into the arena to accept our first-place trophy. “Well done!” exclaimed dad as he and mom came up to congratulate us. “They’re going to have a ‘Championship Barrel Race’ – whatever that means – as the last event of the evening. Should I sign you up?”

“Nope,” I told him firmly.

“No??” he asked in amazement, “why not?”

I tried my best to explain it to dad, but how do you tell someone that you’re emotionally maxxed out? That if you have just one more adrenaline rush, you’re going to burst??

I wrapped my arms around my horse’s neck and hugged him tight. He had done much more than won me a trophy that night – he had helped his shy young human win a measure of the confidence and self-esteem which had been sadly lacking in her life. I knew that we were both champions.

Snoopy Do is gone now, after living to a ripe old age, but he was one of the few special ones who changed my life. He will gallop within my memory always.