By Barb Buntin
There is no finer feeling than being on the back of a horse. It is God-like….really. The horse is such a powerful and magnificent animal. And to have that force of nature in your hands, in your control is special. What is even better is to have the experience of a horse trainer extraordinaire. I had some friends who knew I liked horses and I had the opportunity, for a brief time, to work with Glenn Randall. He had trained the Red Pony, Roy Rogers’ horse, Trigger, the buckskin in West World with Yul Brenner, the white stallion in Ben Hur. Glenn, and his son Corky, trained The Black Stallion and taught Mr.Ed to talk. This guy could take a horse apart, put it back together and spit out what he didn’t need. At the time he was providing horses for the western movie makers that came to the Old Tucson Movie Set.
He was also training a liberty act for the Circus Vargas. A liberty act was about 10 or so horses that are not ridden but trained to worked on their own. He did that in about 2 months.
The most exciting to ride was the West World buckskin. This horse had been trained in dressage and what a joy to ride. The neat thing is that Glenn would ask and keep getting. Ask and get and ask and get. Even the cutting horse trainer I knew didn’t get as much in a single session.
The Black Stallion movie was out at that time and he had a black stallion not “the” black Stallion there. He had trained him to attack. So he had me stand in a pen, gave it the signal to attack. He came running with ears back, tail up. Glenn put up his hand and that horse just walked off. OMG!
Glenn had mentioned at one time that the reason he was in Tucson was he needed to get out of California for awhile. Beats me why. Anyhow he got the Liberty act all trained for the circus and was on his way. Don’t know what happened to the gig at Old Tucson. ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
