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“I can take him over to the fence and let people ask questions and he’ll just side pass over to the fence and let kids love on him and rub him. He loves the attention.” – Windy Ratchford Lattin
Lattin started noticing something else as well: “When I would take him someplace, he would pretty much show off, thinking he’d become this little dancing horse. He was very controlled. I could side pass him, and he would just dance and prance. He was so beautiful; I thought he’d make a good dancing trick horse.”
It takes a unique temperament to make a trick horse. That’s something Fry knew the gelding had for years, sharing one anecdote in particular: “I was under him doing leg work and a chicken landed on his head and flapped his wings. He just ducked his head and took it, because I wasn’t going anywhere. He could have killed me. I wasn’t able to get out from under him. Him being my baby, I didn’t
think anyone else could do it but me.” Lattin started working OK Black Panther as a trick horse
a couple of years ago. By December 2018, he
knew how to march. He’s learned an array of different tricks: how to bow to either side and getting up and down from a pedestal. “My good friend Jessica Brown Fowlkes has helped me remotely a lot with his training,” Lattin noted.
Lattin and OK Black Panther got to
put on their show three times last year and
a couple of times in 2020 before the wave
of cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, she learned a few things about the gelding. “This horse thrives in front of a crowd,” she said. “He loves to perform. The racetrack helped prepare him a lot for what he’s doing now. The crowds, the lights, the music, that had him all prepared to concentrate on what we were doing.” And, through it all, he’s still just as friendly. “I can take him over to the fence and let people ask questions and he’ll just side pass over to the fence and let kids love on him and rub him. He loves the attention. It’s his niche,” Lattin said. “With the trick training he can work another 10 years.”
As for Fry, she says she’s “doing better
than I should” when it comes to her cancer treatments. She credits her positive attitude and even has her own business making wooden spoons, which she promotes on Facebook, while also continuing to help care for her father. She does still get to see OK Black Panther from time to time, as well: “I’ve been around lots of horses, but there are very few special like he is.”
Windy Ratchford Lattin and OK Black Panther put on their show three times last year and a few times in 2020 before the wave of cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
SPEEDHORSE May 2020 47