A cowboy rode into a small town in Oklahoma and stopped at a saloon for a beer. What he didn’t know was that the locals had a habit of playing pranks on strangers. When he finished his beer and went outside, he found that his horse had been stolen.
He went back into the saloon, flipped his gun into the air, caught it above his head, fired a shot into the ceiling, and yelled, “Which one of you sidewinders stole my horse?”
No one answered.
“All right, I’m gonna have another beer,” said the cowboy. “If my horse ain’t back outside by the time I finish, I’m gonna do what I done in Texas! And I don’t like to have to do what I done in Texas!”
The cowboy had another beer, and when he went outside, his horse had been returned to the post. He saddled up and got ready to ride out of town.
The saloon keeper came outside and said, “Say, pardner, before you go — what happened in Texas?”
The cowboy said, “I had to walk home.”
Posted by bluebird of bitterness 
A horse of a different color
November 28, 2011The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that “When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”
Not everyone subscribes to the Dakota’s view. In government and education, for example, more complex strategies are often employed — such as:
1. Using a bigger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a blue-ribbon committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging a foreign junket to observe how other cultures ride horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as “living impaired.”
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and training to improve the dead horse’s performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line than a live horse.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
14. Instituting affirmative action quotas for dead horses.
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