Changes and Sadness

                                                by Laura Crum

            We went for a ride in the woods the other day. It is mid-January and much that we saw was dry and dusty. This is unheard of for this time of year. The central coast of California is in the grip of a huge drought. In 56 years of living here, I have never seen a January quite like this. So this is one big change.

            Looking on the bright side of this change, the footing is perfect. No mud. Nothing is slippery. We can do any ride we care to do.

            We decided to ride our usual two hour through-the-forest loop backward. Trails look so different when you ride them in the opposite direction. It would be like a whole new ride. This would be a change, too. Off we went, down the steep hill that we usually ride up, and across the creek.

Henry is such a good horse—the very best.

            Henry will be 26 years old this spring. He’s still going well, but I have cut back on the work he is asked to do. On this ride I noticed for the first time that Henry was a little reluctant to climb the steeper hills. (There are no big hills on this ride, just some short bits of up and down.) I paid attention and on the climbs Henry is stepping short on the right hind. He’s fine on level ground. I’m pretty sure his hock is bothering him. To be frank, it’s a miracle his hocks haven’t bothered him before this. Older QH rope horses almost always have a touch of bone spavin. I will keep a good eye on Henry and we may avoid steep climbs from here on. Another change.

            Though I am accepting that Henry can’t go on forever as a riding horse, it makes me sad to acknowledge that this part of our lives is coming slowly but steadily to an end. My son and I are still riding together on Henry and Sunny, and both horses have been a total blessing. But Henry IS 26. The change is coming.

            We rode through the forest. I snapped a few photos as we moved along. All of them turned out blurry, but you can see how pretty the forest is. It was 70 degrees—just like a summer ride. Lovely under the trees.

            Here we go through what feels like a doorway between two big redwood trees. It’s neat.

            And then I got lost. I know, sounds idiotic. Lost on a two hour ride I’ve done dozens of times before. Sort of like Gilligan’s Island (this really dates me). And I wasn’t truly, exactly lost. I just took a wrong turn and we didn’t end up riding our usual loop backward after all. It’s surprising how different a trail looks when you ride it in the opposite direction. But we found our way back to the truck and trailer eventually and saw some pretty things along the way. Reflections of redwoods seen through Sunny’s ears…

            Everything is changing, all the time. “Change is the very most natural thing,” in the words of Jerry Jeff Walker. A lot of the time things seem stable and we don’t notice the changing. But sometimes things seem to change suddenly, all around us. Like my 13 year old son, who, in one year, is no longer a little boy. And there have been several other changes in our life as a family, all in the past six months. On the surface, some of these changes are not so positive. And yet, maybe it just depends on how you look at it.

            This drought we are currently going through here in coastal California looks like a pretty darn negative thing. But we sure have had some lovely days…and some lovely rides. Can’t help but enjoy this 70 degree weather.

            Henry may be getting near to the end of his time as a riding horse. But he has given us SO much. From when my kid was just turned 7 until now at 13 and 1/2 years old, my son has ridden this good red horse everywhere, and never had one bad experience. How wonderful is that? Wonderful enough to balance some inevitable sadness of loss, I believe. Those good rides will forever be a part of us.

These last few months we have had our fair share of change and sadness. Some people we care about have had some very difficult and unavoidable problems, and some other people we know and thought were our friends have turned out not to be our friends. These things are true and they do make me sad when I think about them.

But my son gave me a hummingbird feeder for Xmas that is made out of an antique ruby red glass bottle. It is beautiful and the hummers love it. The feeder glows like a jewel in the sunlight and the birds whiz up to it in delight. I can think about the sad things, or I can watch the hummingbirds.

I think I will just keep my eye on the hummingbirds.

           

Crazy Stupid Idiots

by Francesca Prescott

I recently went for a nice quiet trail ride with Céline, a lovely lady and Grand Prix rider who has become one of my trainers. It was a beautiful sunny day, relatively warm for January, and our horses were happy to be out, strolling along peacefully. Céline rode a friend’s horse, a grey Lusitano stallion tending to be pretty laid back about the world at large. As for Qrac, he’s become far more laid back during outside rides than he was when I first bought him; he’ll look at things, sometimes stop and think about them, wiggle around them if he thinks they might be a bit dodgy, but rarely does he spook and spin like he used to. He’s far more sure of himself and sensible.

So Céline and I ambled along, chatting, our horses behaving particularly politely on this gorgeous day. We didn’t go far, just walked the easy hour-long loop through quiet country lanes and forest paths. And then we headed back to the stables.

To reach my stables you have to go down a long stretch of narrow country road and then turn right, down the private entrance to the barn. It’s not a busy road, and for part of the way there are open fields on both sides, so if there’s a car coming, or a tractor coming, you can push your horse over onto the grass and have plenty of space. However, as you get closer to the right turn for the stables, the fields on the right-hand side turn into horse paddocks, so there’s only a narrow grassy verge between the road and paddocks. But it’s usually fine, and I’ve found that the majority of people in cars slow down when approaching horses, or if they don’t do so spontaneously, they are willing to slow down if you turn around, smile, raise an arm and make “please-slow-down” gestures. Most tractor drivers do the same.

Naturally, as a rider, I always slow down, or even stop when I see riders, giving them plenty of room to pass. So if I was a farmer driving a tractor down a narrow country road or down any road on the planet, and I saw people on horses ahead of me, I’d slow down and try to keep a safe distance. As a farmer, surely I’d know enough about the unpredictability of horses (or dogs, or cows, or sheep, or any animal) to have the common sense to take my foot off the accelerator, hang back a little, give the riders time to get themselves organised, find a safe haven if necessary, or turn their horses to show them what is approaching. Surely I’d have safety in mind. Surely I wouldn’t hurtle towards them at full speed when I could see full well that the only place they’re allowed to go without breaking the highway code is onto a narrow grassy verge between the road and a line of paddocks. Surely I’d have enough imagination to conjure up disaster scenarios and do everything I can to avoid them.

I know it’s a stereotype and that I’m naïve, but I tend to have this image of farmers being friendly, kind, nature-loving people with rosy cheeks and big, bouncy dogs, as depicted in the English pony stories I read during my childhood. Sure, they’d give you a bollocking if you ploughed through their fields on horseback, and they’d have every right to do so. But they would never behave like the criminal moron Céline and I met on the road back to the stables. As far as I’m concerned, nobody would. Ever.

I heard the tractor long before I saw it. I could tell it was going fast, and something in my gut told me it might cause trouble. I turned in my saddle and saw it speed down the hill, past the church, hurtling towards us, just as we approached the area where, if traffic approaches, you’re supposed to ride along the grassy verge between the road and the paddocks.

“Uh-oh, there’s a tractor,” I said to Céline. “Coming fast.”

“He’ll slow down,” she answered, matter-of-factly. She’s very poised, Céline.

“I’m not so sure,” I replied, glancing behind me worriedly as I pushed Qrac to the side of the road and onto the grassy verge.

We didn’t have the opportunity to discuss whether he would or he wouldn’t. Because the moron in the old red tractor definitely didn’t want to, and was only forced to do so because, as he powered towards us, coming really REALLY close, our horses freaked out and clattered into the middle of the road.

At that point I figured tractor-twit would stop, allow us to reassure our horses, get them back under control, let us ride ahead and turn right down the private road into the barn. Yeah right. As Céline’s horse launched himself across the road and into the field on the left hand side where he took off at a gallop (she stopped him within a few strides), and my panic-stricken Qrac swung left and right, cantering on the spot in the middle of road, slipping and sliding, totally petrified, the tractor continued to roll forwards. I couldn’t believe it. Speaking reassuringly to my horse, I encouraged him to cross over to the left side of the road and into the open field. As I did so, the tractor continued to come towards me. The man scowled at me, gesticulating impatiently for me to get out of the way. I managed to get us into the field where Qrac also took off, coiling his haunches underneath him for a couple of strides before I could stop him.

“We’ll trot,” yelled Céline, dealing with her own panic-stricken, seriously coiled Lusitano. Her idea was to reach the turn-off to the barn as quickly as possible as tractor guy wasn’t going to give us a break, and we’d almost reached the walled private property at the end of the field and couldn’t go any further. There was no way in heck that the horses were going to stand still and wait for the tractor to pass, so we power-trotted forwards, clattering back across the road and to the relative safety of the right turn to the yard where at least we knew the tractor wouldn’t follow. As we coaxed the horses back to a very tense walk, tractor-man roared past us, revving his engine, scowling.

“I can’t believe it!” I exclaimed, still trying to steady Qrac’s nerves, not to mention my own.

“There are idiots everywhere,” said Céline. She has her own stables a few minutes away by car, and told me she regularly deals with morons in tractors.

Qrac’s heart was still pounding and my legs felt like jelly as Céline and I dismounted about two minutes later. A few people had watched our misadventure from the stables’ car park and asked me whether I’d got the tractor’s license plate number, knowing what exactly what I meant when I replied that I’d been far too busy trying to stay alive to do anything of the sort.

I’ve thought about this incident many times since, wondering what the heck was wrong with that guy in the tractor. I’m aware that many farmers around here dislike horses. They harbour a lot of animosity and jealousy towards riders, even towards barn owners, whom they consider rich and spoiled (incidentally, the owners of my stables are also farmers). But harbouring animosity and putting lives at risk danger isn’t the same thing.

I don’t want to imagine what could have happened if Qrac or Céline’s horse had slipped on the road. I don’t want to imagine what could have happened if it hadn’t been Céline and me out there, but other less-experienced riders, who hadn’t been able to regain control over their horses. I don’t want to imagine the dozens of other catastrophic scenarios that could have gone down. However, I’d like to believe that the twit in the tractor has since had his licence revoked, been locked up for criminal behaviour, and is sitting in a dingy prison cell being forced to write “I won’t harass riders with my tractor ever again” a gazillion times. Sadly, I doubt it.

Have you ever been bullied on the road while out riding? Why do you think people behave that way? Of course, as Céline said, there are idiots everywhere, but what do you think could be done to increase awareness and discourage people from behaving like this?

Looking Past the Ears

by Laura Crum

Between weather and busyness, we haven’t been riding a lot for the last month. Maybe twice a week at best. The occasional trail ride or beach ride, mostly short rides in our riding ring. The picture above was taken when we rode to the Lookout over a month ago (the view past Sunny’s ears is of Monterey Bay).Yesterday we went up to my uncle’s place to help gather the roping cattle for the first practice roping this spring. That was a blast. But overall, we haven’t been doing much. At times I feel almost guilty, as if I “ought” to be doing more with the horses. I turn them out most days to graze, and the horses seem perfectly happy. I enjoy our short relaxing rides when I get them, and both Sunny and Henry behave well and move out freely. But some sort of Puritan work ethic makes me feel bad about not doing more, or I hear about what someone else is doing with their horse and I am envious (that’s the bad thing about these horse blogs—you can always read about someone who is doing much more with their horses than you are doing with yours). I really know better than this—but I still fall into these traps. And then I got a reminder of what its really all about.

Last week we had a little boy over to visit who had never been to our place before. He’s part of my kid’s homeschool group, and a very sweet, smart, interesting child. I’ll call him Sam. Anyway, as I usually do, I offered Sam a chance to ride a horse (with his mother’s permission). Sam had never ridden a horse before and was very excited.

I have a simple protocol for this. Kids are only allowed to ride Henry, my son’s bombproof gelding. And they must wear a helmet. We all go down to the barn and I catch and saddle Henry, explaining to the kid how to “be” around a horse. No running, no shouting, don’t approach the horse from behind, listen to me and do what I tell you at all times…etc. Henry is actually proof against most anything, but I want to teach the right behavior. My kid models brushing the horse and our visitor gets to brush him, too.

Then I put my son on Henry and he rides his horse up to the riding ring and demonstrates a little walk, trot, lope. The visiting kid stays with me and I point out just what my child is doing to control Henry. If the kid seems keen, and Sam was, I put the visitor up behind my son on Henry (if they’re small enough) and let them walk around like that so they can get used to the feeling of being on a horse without thinking about anything else. And then I ask them if they want to ride by themselves.

Sam was very eager to do this. I legged him up on Henry, helped him put his feet in the stirrups (which have tapaderos—very important), and showed him how to hold the reins. I explained how to steer Henry, how to get the horse to move. I told Sam to hang on by the horn, not by the reins or his heels—under all circumstances. Sam’s face was bright, eager and attentive. And off we went—with me at the end of the long, slack leadrope, walking along beside him.

This is how I give kids their first ride. Henry has done it many times and knows what I am up to. He knows he’s supposed to obey the kid on his back—that I’m just there for backup. And this is important, because though Henry is safe, he is not above walking over to a patch of grass and putting his head down—which is way more than any first time kid rider can cope with. So I make sure this doesn’t happen.

Anyway, I’m following Sam along and I look up to see how he’s doing. And you never saw such a lit up face. He was positively incandescent with delight. “Do you like it?” I asked.

“This is so much fun! Its so cool just to be here on his back, looking past his ears. Its great!”

Well, I grinned and we went on, but his words stuck with me. Because I feel the same way. To this day, even when I’m so busy that I hardly have time to ride, when I do climb on my horse just to walk him around the ring or go for a brief trail ride, I have that exact emotion. This is so much fun. Just being on the horse’s back, looking past his ears at the world ahead. Feeling him carrying me along. Even if I do nothing but walk around my riding ring for ten minutes. I just love it. I hope I always feel this way.

And I realized (yet again), that its time to let go of comparing myself to others and worrying about what I “ought” to do, and simply take pleasure in the joy that horses bring me. If puttering around my riding ring on Sunny’s back looking at the roses on a spring day contents me, that’s great. Same for gathering the roping cattle and going on a short trail ride with my son. Not very exciting stuff by some standards, maybe, but if it brings me joy then its good for me. I need to remember this (!)

So today, in honor of Sam’s words, here are some recent photos showing the view from Sunny’s back, looking past his ears.

On a spring trail ride, along a rather overgrown trail.

Looking across the big meadow—gathering cattle at my uncle’s place.

On the beach, looking at my son on Henry and our friend, Wally, on Twister.

At the Lookout last fall. My kid is resisting having his picture taken.

Looking down at Sunny.

How about you guys? Do you love those “ear views”, too? And do you, like me, get sucked into guilt and envy in your “horse life” more often than you would like?