Why Santa Has Reindeer

We all know Santa has reindeer to pull his sleigh, but I wondered why he would do that? Reindeer are slow and stubborn. They only want to eat that mossy stuff in the Tundra and apparently, they are hard to steer and have their own mind.

So recently, Santa was interviewed and asked why he didn't use horses to pull his sleigh? This is what Santa replied:

"Well, first off, most of the applicants were Arabians and they turned out to have a fear of heights. In fact, they had a fear of air in general. Their snorts and feet-planting would bring the sleigh to a complete stop and pitch off the packages. They don't follow anything but the lead mare and her head-tossing raised heck with the rein signals.

Then the Standardbreds showed up and that fast trot, winging thing doesn't work well in the air because it tends to propeller and pitch us around in the sleigh. They were great at pulling, though. Faultless.

We ended up auditioning a team of heavy drafts and their ground drill was top notch, but they didn't get any lift-off.

Saddlebreds didn't get any air either because they have those dead weights on their shoes and there's that winging thing again.

A friend of mine, a cowboy in Texas, sent me a team of reining and team penning horses to try, but every time they got near a cloud cluster, they'd run crazy circles around it and throw us off course.

So, we auditioned some Baroque horses - Lippizaners, Andalusians and Lusitanos - figuring they could do airs above the ground and get lift-off. That didn't end up working because they wanted me to wear one of those flouncy Spanish riding outfits with a three-cornered hat instead of my Santa suit and cap, so I couldn't very well show up looking like King Ferdinand on Christmas Eve. As good as they are in the air, so bad they are at landing. Belly flops every time. Sad. No injuries, though.

For the hunter/jumpers, we were finally wearing the right color - red, but the fox didn't like being the lead all the time.

The thoroughbreds were fast as lightning, but we missed all our test stops - yupp, blazed right past every single one.

Then we found out that mustangs are called "mesteno" in Spanish, which translates as "you can never get these horses to do anything in harness, much less in unison." They didn't speak English, anyway, and my Spanish is lacking.

We also tried some pony breeds, but kids and parents started complaining alike about missing ginger nuts and nibbled on packages.

As a last resort, we called in the old, reliable quarter horses but only half of them showed up for the audition.

The horse thing didn't work so we tried dogs. Seemed logical to use sled dogs, but the tail-wagging thing created too much air turbulence.

So we ended up with reindeer."

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