So.  Last Monday, Cory and Jade and Sunny and I headed out to ride at Mt. Madonna, where we go every couple of weeks.  We were about 6 miles into our canonical 7.5 mile loop, when I got sidetracked by something at the side of the trail and pulled Sunny off.  Jade and  Cory stopped, too, while I futzed around.  After a little while, Sunny must have gotten too close to Jade because Jade made mare-faces at Sunny, who made them back. That brought me out of my unconscious state, we separated the mares, and rode on, Jade leading, Sunny following – at the NATRC-approved one horse length distance.

After we’d been moving for a couple of minutes, all of a sudden, Jade started backing straight at us, at about 900 mph.  She could have reached 950 mph, easy, but she was kicking at every step, which slowed her down a little.  (And I might add that Jade is about 40 axe-handles across the butt and about a foot taller than Sunny, so she was an impressive sight as she was plowing into us.)

By the time I processed the situation, Sunny had taken matters into her own hooves: she backed a little, then swapped ends, and started hopping sideways to get out of range.  I made it through the backing, and the end-swap, but I came off about the third hop – and on her fourth hop, she landed on my left foot with her left hind hoof.  I *think* I stayed on until the 8 second whistle, but not too much beyond that.

I’m not sure what Jade was doing while Sunny was taking evasive action. When I looked up from my prone position on the ground, Sunny had stayed with me, and Cory was off Jade and pulling her away from where Sunny and I had ended up.

I had landed on my elbow and had a scrape, and Sunny had landed on my foot, but those were the only issues.  My foot hurt, but not too badly, so I climbed back on Sunny and we rode back to the trailer, with Sunny and me leading the whole way.  By the time we got back to the barn, my foot was hurting a little more and in a familiar way: it had felt this way when another horse had stepped on it and broken it during a fire evacuation a few years ago, so I immediately left for home and had The Husband drive me to our doctor.

The Doc manipulated my foot and unburdened himself of the opinion that it wasn’t broken.  We’ve been going to him for quite awhile, though, so when I said I thought it was, he respected my opinion and referred me for x-rays.  He was pretty humble when he called and told me that I didn’t have *a* broken bone, I had *three* broken bones – stable fractures of the third, fourth, and fifth metatarsals.  I immediately wanted to know about timelines for healing and made sure that he knew that, with this switch of diagnosis, he had seriously interfered with my plans.  (I’m doing a long bike ride with Esther in March.)   So he referred me to one of his buddies who’s a Sports Medicine Doctor, Dr. Warren.

So I take my x-rays and go to see Dr. Warren.  When I get into the exam room, he’s sitting at a monitor, looking at my x-rays and shaking his head.  I get on the exam table and he starts gently manipulating my foot.  After about 30 seconds, he gets more . . . vigorous.

After about a minute, he stops and looks at me and says, “This is amazing.  I shouldn’t be able to do that – you should be shrieking in pain and jumping out of your skin. When I hear about someone getting three fractures in their foot from a horse stepping on them, I think of 9 months to a year for healing time.  The reason isn’t the broken bones, it’s because the breaks are usually accompanied by serious soft tissue damage; the horse twists as he hits, or just rests a moment on the foot, which is enough to pulverize the ligaments, which take months to heal and are incredibly painful while they are compromised.”

“In your case, it must have been like when someone breaks a board with a karate chop: the board is broken but the hand is unhurt because the energy was transferred so quickly.  Your horse karate chopped you and, as a result, you have an 8 week injury, not a 9 month injury – and you can start riding your bike immediately, and as much as you want.”

So – is that how you expected that to end?  Me neither. And for the curious, I rode my bike 35 miles yesterday and my foot felt better at the end than it did in the beginning.  I guess it’s moving the fluids around?  Anyhow, due to Sunny’s untapped karate skills, what could have been a show-stopper for me was turned into an inconvenience – it does still hurt quite a lot to walk and I’m supposed to walk as little as possible for the next couple of months.

It was really, really scary, mostly because it was absolutely unexpected, from my point of view.  Sunny and Jade have gone out together at least 100 times in the past 3 years, they’ve even shared a pasture. They’ve done mare-y things, but nothing like this.  And we (Cory and I talked about it) didn’t see it coming at all.  I guess, in retrospect, maybe I should have taken the mare-ears that preceded it as a warning – but there were minutes between that instance and the explosion.  Usually, I think of time going faster in Horseland, i.e. if you’re going to reward something, you have to be *so* quick to do it while the horse is still thinking about it.  But maybe because that’s something a human is introducing, not a social status issue with other horses?  Also, the mare-ears are a behavior we’ve seen before without this outcome.

And Cory wants to know what she should have done. She says it was the most powerless feeling she’s ever had on a horse:  she couldn’t make Jade go forward, and she had totally lost contact on the bit, so she had no tools to influence Jade’s motion until she jumped off and held her by her reins.  And I suspect that holding her only worked because whatever crisis that Jade was addressing was over – when her butt was coming at us, it was fully committed and I don’t think any puny human on the end of a set of reins was going to stop her.

So my questions, in order, are:

1. What signs should we have looked for to predict this was going to happen?
2. What should we have done to nip it in the bud?
3. Once it started what could either Cory or I have done to break it off?
4. And, most importantly, when did Sunny learn karate?  Who taught her?  (Marybeth?)  And if she knows karate, why didn’t she use it on Jade, instead of saving it for me?

Wanna ride – in 7 weeks or so?

donna

Recently, an astute client offered me a very powerful observation, once again proving every experience has a lesson in it when you remain open to learning.

Last month while working at a ranch where my style is, lets say neither understood nor appreciated by the owners of the place, I was working with the client’s horse. This Arabian mare is a sweet and intelligent being, however, emotionally high strung. She suffers from separation anxiety and a huge lack of confidence. (Even as a brood mare she was docile and not much of a disciplinarian to her offspring) In short, her emotional education requires more development than her training needs. I believe that the understanding of the emotional needs of horses is where the owners of this ranch lack education, also. I’m sure their intentions are good and they wish no ill will upon the horses. How I wish they could have a conversation with Joe Camp, author of The Soul of a Horse, a fabulous account of his experience moving from the needs of the owner to the needs of the horse. 

Anyways, back to the lesson.  I had brought this lovely mare to a small corral to see if I could simply work on getting connected with her.  I knew putting her in the large fully walled bull pen would terrify her, thus the decision to have her in a space allowing her to see the other horses.  As expected, when I removed the halter and lead, she tore around the corral, head high, nostrils flaring, flight response in full mode.  I wasn’t remotely concerned and certain that I would decipher her trauma or experiences that led to her lack of confidence.  As I discussed my observations with her owner, the husband owner of the ranch came over, oozing bad feeling as he loudly announced something to the effect that I was getting the horse all worked up, she’d never calm down because of the stallion on the premises. I reassured him that I’d have no problem calming her down and that this was expected.  I also asked him if his concern was for his stallion (that poor thing a truly disturbed animal). He replied the stallion was not a problem, he was going to be stuck having to “deal with”  the mare taking a week to calm down now. (Huh?)  I again assured him that everything would be fine.  He moved off a few feet and stood glaring at us and engaged in commentary with another person, fully intending me to over hear.  I did. 

Meanwhile, I continued to breath deeply, maintain my composure for this poor mare, and try to ignore my naysayers. I suspect he must’ve called his wife, a woman who even on a good day seems unable to help emitting a very negative energy.  By now, I have put the halter back on the mare to confirm my theory about her lacking confidence and illustrate how a simple change like putting the halter back on allowed her to feel as if someone were in charge and she didn’t need to feel so threatened.  The mare, although still high-headed, exhibited a palpable change, regained focus on me and promptly hooked up. I continued to explain my observations, and the relationship between being haltered and feeling secure.   This is one reason I focus on so much liberty work.  It allows and encourages horses to explore and gain self confidence, make decisions, and work in partnership with people, not in submission to us.

Then I blew it.  The wife had come down and now stood on the other side of the corral, arms tightly folded across her chest and shooting daggers with her eyes.  My client had been watching and listening intently, both to me and the critical observers.  Having worked with me for several years, she is confident in my approach and neither of us were concerned about that.  But she could see that I was getting stressed.  She describes seeing my eyes darting back and forth between the glaring eyes of the ranch owners and her horse.  She saw her horse go from becoming connected and secure, to a renewed concern.  She could see the mares eyes also darting back and forth, clearly concerned about what was bothering me so much.  I was quickly falling out of the moment.  Where I most needed to be completely present with the anxious mare, I allowed my own anxiety to rear its ugly head.  Horses behave as they feel,  and they know when we aren’t. My movements and actions were no longer congruent with my emotions and this highly sensitive horse knew it.  I ended the session, knowing I could no longer be effective.  I was torn between anger at the ranch owners for their negative energy, and extreme disappointment with myself for letting down this sweet mare who needed me at that moment. 

I know that being 100% present in the moment with horses is fundamental to the relationship.  And I know that this is not always easy to achieve.  Our thoughts of memories, fears, expectations, insecurities, all float through our minds trying to take hold and steal the moment.  Remaining connected is a skill that requires focus, dedication and practice.  This experience, rather the keen observations of my client and her willingness to share it with me, serve to remind me of the importance of providing my equine students with 100% of myself.  They expect us to give them complete attention in our truest form. They are quick to see through facades. They recognize emotion in us even when we haven’t yet uncovered it ourselves.

I was going to end my story there, but as I sit here, rereading, I think its even more useful to give you the epilogue.  Several weeks later, I returned to work at that ranch assured by clients that they had spoken to the owner and stated they would not tolerate negativity around their horses.  That helped, but not much. As a made the long trek, my mind swirled with unease. I say “unease” because I’m not finding a more appropriate descriptor.  But I knew one thing and that was that I had to be ‘all-in’ when I arrived.  The horses and their people counted on  me.  So, I’d like to share some of the techniques I use to quiet my mind, and bring my very best to the horses.

Those of you who have attended confidence camps with me will recall me speaking of ‘tapes and stories’.  In short (real short) the tapes are those thoughts that seem to float through your head defining your space.  “I’m probably doing it all wrong.” “I’m not sure what I’m doing".”  “What if, What if, What if….” The stories are the conscious words you use to make your tapes true.  Now tapes and stories are not all bad.  To make a new story, you just need fresh tapes.  With a little time and practice, its easier than you think.  If you have ever gotten the words or tune to a song stuck in your head, you can do this with ease.

Close your eyes and feel your breaths, letting your shoulders and neck relax with each exhale. Feel your shoulders drop as you breath out and let your chest expand with each inhale.  Then, as you find a rhythm to the breathing, add several positive words you want your personal energy to convey.  For me, I like to do this in counts of four.  For example, breath in for a four count, hold for four, exhale in four, and wait for four, repeat.  Now that my chest and shoulders have relaxed, I add a four beat mantra to the rhythm.   “I am, positive, confident, happy.”  The words change daily depending on events, but the technique remains the same.    Continue saying your four beat mantra over and over and over.  When stray thoughts pop into your head, simply acknowledge them with a word (I use “thought”) and then let it pass as you continue to concentrate on your positive words.  You can do this anytime, anywhere.  Well, if your driving keep those eyes open…. In the time it takes to shower, shampoo and shave, you can have cemented this new tape with a thousand repetitions already.  Notice how it becomes like a song stuck in your head.  Instead of an intruding insecure thought sneaking in as you connect with your horse, this positive energy passes through instead.  Our body doesn’t react to events.  It reacts to our thoughts about the event.  When you have created tapes that are positive and uplifting, your body will respond accordingly.  You will feel it and your horse will know it.

So, as I drove the last few miles to the ranch, I began breathing deeply, calming my nerves.  I promised myself to remain steadfast in my take it slow and easy style no matter who was watching.  I brought forth my positive energy with words of happiness, confidence, openness, and trust.

My sessions ended with one student riding his horse bareback and bridleless.  The young horse I’m just starting under saddle with sporadic rides 3-4 weeks apart, walked calmly and confidently on a loose rein, willingly yielded, and remained calm and happy through out. As much as I wanted to revisit the nervous mare, we decided that better wait until she can come here to “valium” ranch, with the full support of all those around her.

Hope this helps with your happy trails!

Marybeth

Summary:  Sunny, Kelly (my mother-in-law) and I went to Lake Cachuma, near Santa Ynez, for a NATRC ride.  It was a gorgeous ride.  And even though it was really cold, ride management arranged for it not to rain while we were actually in the saddle.  As usual, probably way too long.  For those of you reading this as an email – there are lots of pictures in the blog, so check it out on your computer and/or avoid reading it on your smart phone.

Day 1 Start

Last weekend, Nov 5-6, Sunny and I went down to Santa Ynez to do the Sage Hill NATRC ride.  Santa Ynez is in NATRC Region 2  (So. Cal and Arizona) and our home turf is Region 1 (Nor Cal, Washington, Oregon, Alaska) so we really were traveling abroad.  The reason we went down was that next year we won’t be eligible to ride in Novice class because Sunny won too many times (5), and I wanted to do one more Novice ride.  Since there aren’t any more rides in Region 1 this season, we were forced to look outside our borders.  My mother-in-law, Kelly, agreed to come along and crew for us, so we were in good shape for the two day ride.

I started watching the Santa Ynez weather before the ride and two weeks before the ride, it was 89 degrees!  However, as the ride got closer, the weather got cooler and cooler, until it was danged cold:  a 60% chance of rain on the ride weekend, gusty winds to 30 mph, with predicted highs in the low 60’s, the lows in the *30’s*.  So I packed every sweater and rain jacket I had into the truck, and all of Sunny’s blankets into the trailer before we took off.

We left on Friday morning, and the drive down was beautiful and, actually, painless. There are three traffic lights pretty close to our barn – and those were the only ones on the 260 mile drive.  Kelly and I really enjoyed the scenery, from rolling hills, similar to Hwy 5, to ocean views.  The only excitement was encountering Cuesta Grade, a 7% down grade that goes on for a couple of miles, right outside Santa Maria, I think.  I was going about 55 mph when we hit the top of it and started our descent. By the time I looked at the speedometer, we were going 70 mph. When I tapped the brakes, the entire rig shook as if the anti-lock brakes had engaged, but we didn’t slow down appreciably!  I figured I was going too fast to downshift, so I cranked up the trailer brake, and just kept tapping the brakes.  I was able to keep us from picking up more speed, and the grade finally flattened – but for the remainder of the trip (and for all future trips), if I couldn’t see the bottom of a hill, I slowed down, took the truck out of overdrive, and just descended at about 50 mph. I’m sure I drove the people behind us nuts, but that was scary!

Anyhow, we made it to ride camp, which was on Lake Cachuma, about 2 PM.  I was driving around, trying to find a place to set up where Sunny could see at least one other horse, when I recognized a rig: the Boicelli’s!  Gene and Vicki are stalwarts of Region 1, where they put on the Round Valley ride, and compete in most of the other rides.  We pulled in next to them, so that Sunny could see, and take comfort from, Vicki’s gelding Stealth Knight, aka Bomber.  By the time we had camp set up, Joe and Michelle Pimentel had pulled in and set up camp on our other side.  Shortly after that, Joe and Ashley Dillard wandered into to Gene and Vicki’s camp, then I took Sunny out for a stroll, and we spotted Jean Armor and Debbie York, too – all Region 1 regulars.  So it was actually sort of a Region 1.75 ride, rather than a totally Region 2 ride.

The camp was beautiful: we were right on the lake and surrounded by beautiful hills, and the campground itself had lots of big oak trees.  As for amenities, there were porta-potties and several water faucets scattered around, so no one had to walk far for the necessities.  However, just as we got into camp, the wind started to blow. It was already in the low 60’s and that wind cut right through us.  It wasn’t too bad in the camp grounds, but the ride meeting was at this very nice roofed picnic area – but it was on a hilltop where the wind could get to us, and it was just freezing.   The ride meeting was short and to the point:  our start time was delayed until 7:30AM  since it was the last day before the time change, and it would still be dark at the normal start time of 7:00!

As I always say in these blogs, I’m always amazed by how long it takes me to get ready to ride.  I made it out of bed about 6:00, made coffee and started to get Sunny ready – and I just barely made it to the starting point by 7:30. Maybe it was all the time I took getting into the unaccustomed number of sweaters and then getting my bib over them all.  In any case, I made it on time.  They started us in pairs, at 1 minute intervals, with the Open riders first, followed by Competitive Pleasure and Novice rides, so Sunny and I started near the end of the pack.

Note:  “Open” division is for experienced and fit horse and rider teams: they go about 25% farther than Novice, where Sunny and I have competed, AND do it 50% faster, that is, at 5 mph average vs. 3.5 mph average.  “Competitive Pleasure” or CP is for experienced teams that don’t want to do the extra distance of Open, and also CP is not divided into weight classifications.   Sunny and I will have to compete in either Open or CP division next year.

Vicki was the only Region 1 rider competing in Open, so she took off and we didn’t see her again until dinner.  All the rest of the Region 1 riders sort of took off in a Novice/CP cloud.  Jean’s horse is inexperienced and she was looking for a calm horse for him to ride with and she soon slotted in with Debbie and her horse – they rode together both days, near the front.  Joe and Michelle were riding with a friend from Southern California, so they were a group, and they stayed back, for the first day, at least.  Sunny and I sort of bounced around between those two groups, meeting some great people from Region 2 as we fell back and moved forward.

Oh yeah, Michelle was riding her mule, Marilyn.  Sunny had seen a mule at the Banana Slug Trail Trials and been mesmerized, so I was a little worried, but I guess Sunny’s over her mule phase because she treated Marilyn pretty much like another horse.

The ride started by going over a wide, dried up river bed, with the path through covered with babyhead boulders.  That was the worst footing of the day. The remainder of the ride was on ranch roads, through some streams, up and around the hills, usually with a view of the lake somewhere.

View of Lake Cachuma from the First Day 1 Climb

We started out with about a 2 mile climb.  Just after the top of the climb, we had our first obstacle:  there was about 40 yards of really steep downhill singletrack, then, at the bottom, the trail abruptly turned up and to the right.  We had to stay balanced on the way down, then correctly shift our weight and re-balance for the uphill.  The judges were sitting in the bushes right at the bottom of the descent, in perfect position to see our transition.  We did okay, but the trail actually split at the bottom and I didn’t know which way to take (either would have been okay), so we sort of bobbled there, but we survived.

After that Sunny and I rode with Debbie and Jean for awhile. In fact, we were with them when we saw our first cattle.  We had just come out of a tree covered passage of the trail into an open area, and there were about 30 cattle spread on either side of the our path through it.  Sunny stopped dead.  She finally went through, but only by following Debbie’s horse, and even then she went sideways, trying to keep an eye on all the cattle at once.  We rode through four more groups of cattle on the first day.  We were riding with Joe and Michelle, and leading when we met the last group of cattle, and Sunny managed to lead the group through.  As soon as she saw them, she stopped and, I suspect, would have stalled out, but Joe yelled at me, “Look where you want to go, not at the cattle!” so I looked down to the end of the meadow and planted myself deep in the saddle, and Sunny took us through.

Debbie Coming Up the Hilll

But I get ahead of myself.  We got through the cattle with Debbie’s help. Our next challenge was a stream:  Jean’s horse, Jack, had a baaaaaaad history in water, as in, wouldn’t cross.  At the first creek, Debbie and I got our horses across, then Jack was able to follow.  The very next stream, Jean asked him to go first and he did.  He got to the mid-point and halted. He was so nervous, his rear legs were shaking, but he stood still and just took it in. By the end of the day, he was putting his head down and drinking.  Re-reading the last two paragraphs makes me realize why I ride NATRC.  Anyhow.

Jean's Horse, Jack, Takes to the Water

You can see the river we were just in the center-bottom of the photo . . .

After the second crossing, we had another long hill climb, this time with a Pulse and Respiration (P&R) check at the top.  After we got through the P&R, the Horsemanship Judge was waiting for us. She checked our tack to make sure that it was set up properly and was in good shape – so she checked girth and breast collar tightness, looked at girth billets to make sure they weren’t frayed or brittle, etc. She then had us do a judged mount, where your mounting is assessed based on how easy it is on your horse, so you try to minimize drag on the saddle. Most of us used the edge of the road as a mounting block.

Judged Mount

Shortly after the P&R, we came into the lunch stop.  Ride management had brought out everyone’s lunch bag, and also alfalfa for the horses, so we had a quiet 45 minutes while we all ate.  After lunch, we just had more of the same – up a hill, down a hill, with a lot of great views. There was one more obstacle on the back side – a gate.  All Sunny and I had to do was open it and go through it, since we were riding Novice.  Michelle, who was riding CP, had to close the gate after she’d gone through it, which proved harder than it should have been because the gate was really heavy. It could be a looong season next year, when we move up.  Sheesh.

Day 1 - Steep Climbs!

The only excitement was at the very end of the ride.  There was a gate we had to close literally within 100 yards of the end of the ride.  Joe and Kodie were the first through and held the gate open for us.  When they went to close it, Kodie got really perturbed and reared straight up – like Silver on the Lone Ranger. I’m not exaggerating, honest. Kodie went up and up until he got straight up and then they just froze.  I thought Joe was coming off and Kodie was going to fall on top of him.  Finally, Kodie came down, Joe settled into the saddle and they finished closing the gate.  Crazy.  And so we finished Day 1, about 23 miles of riding.

The temperatures had started out really cold, but had gotten steadily warmer all day. By the time we were finished, about 3:30, it was a really nice, crisp day.   It stayed comfortable into the evening, so dinner was enjoyable, and the ride meeting was comfortable.  I was beat, so as soon as the meeting was over, I put a fleece blanket on Sunny and headed for bed.

I passed out, but was awakened by a pinging noise about 1:15 – it was the first drops of rain hitting the camper’s metal roof, so I hopped out of bed and traded Sunny’s cooler for her winter, waterproof blanket.  It rained steadily and hard until about 4 AM, and the wind blew.  I checked Sunny periodically, and she was staying warm, but I made sure she had something to eat all night long.

When I started getting her ready for the ride on Sunday, she was clearly out of sorts – 23 miles, then wind and rain while tied to a trailer, and now we’re riding again?  We headed up to the starting area where we met Michelle and Marilyn the Mule. Joe was only riding the first day, so Michelle and I decided to ride together.

Michelle and Marilyn the Mule

On this day, we went along the lake before we started climbing, and it was gorgeous. It was really cold, so the sun came through steam rising from the lake and the remnants of last night’s clouds around the hills. There were beautiful geese out in the lake, and small birds that we flushed as we rode along the reeds in the shallow water.  We were riding on ranch land and there were  lots of deer in the woods, and horses and cattle in pastures along our route.

Day 2 - Next to Lake Cachuma

Our first obstacle was very similar to the first obstacle on the previous day:  a steep downhill followed by a quick transition to a steep uphill.  I was late getting my balance for the uphill, but I frequently am (I’m working on it! I’m working on it!).  The real problem on this obstacle was the person in front of us: she was a new rider and was really having trouble with her horse.  She couldn’t get her started down the trail.  I figured the right thing to do was wait until she could do the obstacle or was comfortable with us coming by.  She ultimately did the obstacle, but it took some time, and Sunny was getting pretty silly by the time we got to give it a try.

Day 2 - Still Next to Lake Cachuma

Our real problem was that Sunny was on a mission to GET THIS RIDE OVER WITH!  I had to ride her with contact the entire 15 miles because if I went to a loose rein, she took any excuse to go to a serious Arab trot.  If I kept contact , she led at a 4.2 mph *walk*.  She was flying. In NATRC, there is a minimum time for being at certain points in the ride, as well as a maximum time, and the penalties for being too fast are more severe than they are for being too slow.  At a couple of points during the day, we had to put Marilyn in the lead so we didn’t come in before minimum time.  Sheesh – how times have changed!

Day 2 - Next to Lake Cachuma Again

The biggest excitement of the whole two days came when we went under Highway 154.  All weekend, people were telling me about “The Tunnel”.  I didn’t think much of it because we do a tunnel under Highway 1 all the time and it’s no big deal.  What I didn’t understand about this tunnel is that the first half of it is a concrete tunnel, like the one we are used to, but the last half of it, maybe 25 feet, is a 12′ diameter corrugated steel pipe.  Literally, a steel pipe.  When  a car goes over the tunnel, the echos are bad in the concrete portion of the tunnel. In the pipe, you can literally feel the sound waves on your ears, and you get multiple, unsynchronized echos from each car. Michelle, who has done this ride before, suspected there might be trouble, so she suggested that we go through single file, and that she and Marilyn go first.

Sunny and I made it about three feet into the pipe when the first car went over.  Sunny’s head went straight up, then it went down and her butt went up.  She wanted to bolt, but couldn’t because Marilyn was in front of her.  So she bucked again. I was horrified, but I managed to keep her nose pointed at Marilyn’s rear end so she couldn’t bolt. Marilyn was totally nonchalant about it and kept moving toward the exit, so Sunny just bucked her way to the other side, following Marilyn.  Whew!  Michelle was cracking up:  she said she heard Sunny start to buck so glanced over her shoulder only to see that I was about to be dumped in her lap, and my eyes were saucer-sized.  Boy, it sure felt that way!

We had to go through the tunnel on our way back, as well, and I got off and hand-walked Sunny. In NATRC, you’re not supposed to make forward progress off your horse – but the paramount rule is that you should use your judgement to remain safe in all cases. I felt like that was one of those cases.  I was not alone.

Day 2 - Half Way to the P & R, some Region 2 Riders

The ride took us up some really steep, long hills, with gorgeous views of the lake and the surrounding hills. One P&R was just down from the top of a multi-mile climb and the view was beautiful.  I didn’t get to take as many pictures as the views deserved because I had to keep two hands on Sunny – she knew in which direction we had left the truck and was determined to get back to it.  By the time we got to the 2 mile point, after which you have to have constant forward motion to the end of the ride, we were about 10 minutes ahead of minimum time, so we had to wait.  Sunny was actually pretty patient, and we finally got going and made it into camp without further excitement, having done a little over 15 miles.

Looking Down on the Last P & R

Actually, there was one other exciting moment. Our route back took us by the golf course. As we came up on it, a foursome was approaching this green.  One of the players was a young girl, maybe 12 years old. She had hit her shot pin-high, about 10 yards to the left of the green, about 15 yards from the pin.  As we rode by, she knocked the ball into the hole!  We clapped.

When we got back to camp, I cleaned Sunny up and took her up for her last vet check, which included a trot out, in which you trot your horse away from the vet, do a circle in either direction, then trot back to the vet, which allows the vet to check for lameness. Usually we’re really good at this, but, as I may have mentioned, Sunny was D-U-N, done, for the weekend.  So when we were trotting back to the vet, as soon as she got to where we’d turn to go to the camper, she turned.  Unfortunately, I was between her and the camper, so she came right across the top of me!  Manners are an important part of the vet’s assessment, so we lost a few points there.

Sunny ended up coming in second – but she lost to Debbie’s horse, who had gotten Sunny through the cattle and Jean’s horse through the water, so I figured that it was not only fair, I was happy about it.  And I got a red (for second) bandana out of it anyway.

The trip home was pleasant – Cuesta Grade was uphill this time – and the ride was great. We’ll plan on doing it again next year.

wanna ride?

donna

Perhaps you have spent hours of research on training methods, read books, gone to clinics, watched the videos, all in an effort to teach your horse those things you want him to know. 

But how about what he wants you to know?  We forget sometimes that lessons await us everywhere and some of the best are right in your barn.  Horses bring out the best and the worst in humans.  Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with a lovely lady from Kentucky.  She has taken on a 14 month old colt who is rapidly becoming a real bully. He bites, he charges, he rears. He’s even chased a full grown cow right over a fence!  Eager to do the right thing by this youngster, this lady promptly called a “professional” trainer for help.  He told her, in no uncertain terms, that she should send the colt to him, he’d keep it at his place so she’d not have to see what he does. (Yes, I gasped too, he actually said that to her).  For $1000 a month (in Kentucky) he’d fix him.  Not able to afford such a fee, she asked for advice on the issue.  His suggestions? Bloody up a two by four or knock out a couple teeth with a hammer next time he comes at you!  Can anyone believe this? I was truly aghast. Yup, they can draw out the worst in humanity.  Thank goodness this colt is in the hands of a woman who will try to do right by him.  But, he’ll likely be handing her some lessons in the process.

Horses have taught, and continue to teach, me plenty.  I’ve learned about trust. More specifically, to give it as well as well as receive it.  And to be as forgiving as horses are when we trample on it.   As a young trainer, I violated my horse’s trust many times, I’m sure.  I remember tying Spirit to a strong tree and saddling her up for the first time.  She broke the rope, raced down the alley way, busted through two wood fences, before stopping, terrified, the saddle hanging under her belly.  I sobbed, certain I had ruined her trust in me forever.  It didn’t, and she has given me countless opportunities over the years to right my many wrongs. Always forgiving, she always trusted my intentions were good and honest.  That happened more than 20 years ago, but I’ve never forgotten the lesson.  I try hard to remember that even with people and children, mistakes happen, but if intentions were good, forgiveness is a must. 

I’ve learned to not attach myself to the outcome.  Horses rarely stick to your agenda.  You soon discover that when in a hurry to get one loaded in a trailer!  I’ve learned that in everything, it is the present, the process, that is most important, and respecting that will likely bring the outcome you desire,  but it will always bring the outcome you need.   More often than not, we will need to adjust our plans to the lesson our horse is bringing us.  Its important to recognize that it is not a battle to be had but rather a journey to be shared. 

Horses are a gift to us.  They behave as they feel, when people rarely do the same.  As we hide behind many faces, our horses are purely authentic.  We can look into those beautiful eyes and see ourselves reflected in total honesty. Let horses let you behave as you feel.   What lessons have you learned?

In my clinics, I’m always striving to get across that extra “it” factor that brings the magic into being with our horses.  In the last camp, I think we all felt “it” but still I hadn’t been able to articulate the source.  I’ve been deep in thought and research and I think the words have finally come to me to actually describe the essence of horse whispering, whether or not the horse whisperers of the world even realize what that essence is.

Lets step back in time. Way back to early man and early horse.  Man as predator and horse as prey is an accepted and accurate concept.  But how did we get there?  Language is the key.  More accurately; how and why each language developed.   As man evolved into the highest predator, he formed verbal language to structure and facilitate his survival.  Horses are believed to pre-date man, and continued to evolve and grow alongside him.  However, as a prey species, their survival depended on non-verbal language, intuition and perceptiveness being key.  These two mechanisms developed exponentially over time. 

Modern science has learned much about the development of the brain.  An explanation of the brain requires volumes.  However, it is also often over simplified.  With respect to that caution,  scientific fact has shown the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for analytical, language, and math.  The right hemisphere is where emotions, intuition, creativity and perception originate.  Roger Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize for his  discoveries regarding the specialized traits of the two hemispheres. The corpus callosum (a bundle of neurological connective tissue) acts as the link between them. 

So back to the development of early man.  As his verbal language developed, his brain became bigger and tended towards the left side dominance of speech and language.  As horses evolved, the intuitive nature of their survival likely tended to right side dominance, where emotion,  intuition and instinct lay.  In humans, the corpus callosum is considerably larger than in horses.   That connective neurological tissue allows the human brain to relay information between the two hemispheres with ease.  However, since horses have much less corpus callosum proportionate to their brain size, it is reasonable to infer that the right side dominance of the equine brain has a less effective ability to transfer information to the left side.  This may account for the necessity of “training both sides” of the horse theories.  It certainly speaks to the monocular trait of their vision.  And how about the fact that the large majority of horses are better on their left leads, controlled by, you guessed it, their right hemisphere. 

If you have ever been somewhere and had the feeling that you were being watched, and turned to find someone looking right at you, you have experienced the intuitive nature of your right hemisphere.   Same with the person you meet who instantly gives you the creeps or the one with which you feel an instant rapport.  On an even more intuitive level, you have probably found yourself thinking of someone only to have the phone ring moments later from or about that very person.  If you are a person who listens to their “gut” feeling or “women’s intuition” you are accessing your right hemisphere.

So as humans with their big ole brains used language to improve their survival and climb to the very top of the food chain, horses were developing an innate understanding of their own.

I believe that horses focus on the energy coming from within and around them.  They are able to sense the stalking predator before they can see or even smell him.  They are attuned to feeling his concentrated energy focused on them.   Horses are finely attuned to other creatures intentions.  You may have experienced that aspect as you walked into the pasture to catch a certain horse and he is the only one that even looks up at your or pays you any mind.  You likely have chosen a  quiet mount to accompany your nervous horse on a first trail ride.  I sure do.  The calming energy from the gentle horse helps to cause the nervous horse to feel more secure.  Put two nervous nellies together and you have quite an e-ticket ride. And, of course, the old adage “green on green makes black and blue” probably fits in here somewhere.

I believe that this energy is what is now commonly referred to as Chi (chee), the vital life force of the body upon which the thousands years of acupuncture and eastern medicine is based.  Horses’ right brained dominance has allowed them to utilize the silent expression of chi to communicate.

All people have an innate ability to connect to their right side, and plenty are naturally right brain dominate.  (as evidenced by left handers, artists, etc)  I feel as if I have finally grasped what it is that allows me to communicate with horses so clearly and with confidence.  Skill and practice and understanding of horses is a part of it, of course.  But directing my thoughts, consciously adjusting my energy, putting my heart into my touch, is what has made me a “whisperer”.  

 And that is what I believe is the “it” factor that people who can calm a horse by their meer presence, move a horse with a glance, and feel a horse’s thoughts.  Its not magic, its Chi.

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Summary:  We did the Fort Ord BETA (Bicycle and Equestrian Trail Association) Intensive Patrol this weekend.  Teams were sent out on pre-planned routes and ran into “disasters” – dummies like they use in Red Cross classes with notes pinned to their fronts describing what happened to them – and the teams had to assess the situation, radio into Control, and report status and actions taken.  A unit from the Salinas Fire Dept participated and came around to each site and did Q & A on what we did, what we should have done, etc.  As we came into camp, a helicopter from Cal Star came in, and we got to learn about working with a helicopter, what resources they have on board, etc.  A really interesting fact is that you can buy insurance for the emergency helicopter evacs for $45 a year for a *family*, and I believe that the pilot said that the trips were running about $30,000 each!  The insurance is available at calstar.org.

The Whole Story:  Sunny and I are members of BETA, which stands for Bicycle and Equestrian Trail Association.  Although only horses and bikes are mentioned in the name, we have a substantial number of hikers who participate and we all seem to take dogs along.  Anyhow, when BETA members are on the trail at Ft Ord,  we wear goofy orange vests and keep count of all the hikers, bikers, horses, dogs, wildlife that we meet and where we met them, and try to answer questions if asked.  If we find a problem on the trail, we call the BLM office or 911, but our primary function is to provide information about the park – both to its visitors and to its owners, hence the usage tracking.

Having said that, we are required to take First Aid and CPR courses before we can join, and BETA usually offers a wilderness first aid course at some point during the year.  In addition, a couple of times a year, the BLM office organizes what they call Intensive Patrols.  For the Intensive Patrols, we all sign up in advance, with our “mode of transportation”: horse, bike or foot; and say if we’re taking a dog along.

Once everyone has indicated if they are coming and how they are going to be getting around, a few of the members who are fairly senior police and fire fighters, divide us into teams, and plan routes and scenarios for each team.  A “scenario” consists of a “body” – a dummy like they use in first aid courses – with a note pinned on it’s shirt, or hanging on a tree branch over it. The note describes the injury we’d be seeing and anything else visual that might be important.   The dummies are planted along the routes we are asked to patrol, with each team having a different route and a encountering a different scenario.  During the patrol, once we find the body, we figure out what we’d do if it was real life, then we call into to Control and report what we found and what we would do.

The idea is to check out quite a few things:  that we know how to use the radios, that the radios will cover all parts of the facility, that we know what to do if we ran into a first aid emergency.  It also mixes up the people; we all tend to ride with the same people in the same parts of the park, so this gets us out of that rut, too.

Anyhow, we met at 9 AM  and the BLM officer gave a talk about “front country” ethics. The interesting thing about that, to me, was that the parks people are starting to recognize that people who come to Ft Ord and Wilder Ranch are frequently not the same people who hike the Grand Canyon, or snow shoe in the National Forests.  And the people using the facilities closer to urban areas may not be familiar with things that the traditional users are – like the “leave no trace” ethic. Anyhow, it was interesting to hear about how the parks community is dealing with the cultural shift.

At 10 AM, the teams were announced, route maps passed out, and the patrol started.  There were two hiking teams, three bike teams, and three horse teams.  Each horse team consisted of three horses, and Sunny and I got teamed up with Brian and Wyatt and their horses. Brian is Wyatt’s father, and Wyatt is delightful teenager.  Their horses, both mustangs, both size large, are also very well-mannered, although they walk way too fast in Sunny’s opinion.  It was pretty funny – the route started out on pavement, so you could clearly hear the horses’ hooves hit the ground.  Sunny was keeping up, but had a cadence that was about 25% faster than the mustangs!

We had to detour around a washed out part of the road, and we left our route for a little while – and we found a body.  It was a “world famous mountain biker, unconscious, with a hoof print on his forehead”.  Just as we were discussing how he could have gotten kicked in the head while riding his bike, a bike team rode up.  Since the body was actually *on* their route and not on ours, we surrendered the site and headed back to our route from our detour.  Not too long after we hit our trail, we found our body. It was a woman who’d been thrown from her horse.  She appeared to be okay, not dizzy, no areas of significant pain, but thought she had been unconscious for a few minutes.  Her horse was there.

We decided that since she’d been unconscious, we’d assume the worst and have her stay lying down, and call in emergency transportation. So we tried to radio Control with our conclusions – but couldn’t, we were down too far in a canyon to get through, so we had to use a cell phone:  Lesson #1.   After we got in touch with Control, we were asked to remain in place until the Salinas Fire Dept crew could get there. The fire crew was three paramedics, I think, in a 4WD ATV.  They arrived, checked out our proposed actions again, loaded the dummy into the ATV, and we all headed for the BLM offices, where we’d started.

As we got close to the office, we heard a helicopter – which *landed* in the road in front of the BLM office.  It was a Cal Star helicopter and it had been dispatched to work with us so that we could learn about safe landing areas for helicopters, how to approach a helicopter, what the Cal Star teams expect from bystanders, etc.  In order, the helicopters need rectangles 25 yards on a side in daylight, 75 yards on a side at night. The area doesn’t have to be dead flat, but it can’t be more than a 10% slope.  When the copter is landing, you should stand as far away as you can, with your head turned and eyes closed to prevent eye injury.

There are three people on the helicopter, a pilot and two nurses. When they are on a mission, the pilot keeps the helicopter running, even while landed – so you should always approach one from the 10 o’clock or 2 o’clock positions – they frequently have tail rotors and it’s really dangerous to be any where near them.  Also, you are encouraged to stoop when approaching the helicopter, just in case the rotors were lower than expected.  Finally, it is hoped that you can help with the loading – the pilot has to stay with the copter, so there are only two people to carry the stretcher and hoist it up into the helicopter.

The crew also showed us the medical equipment they had on board – defibrillators, things to work on airways, surgical tools, etc. The medical people on board the copters are checked out to do more than usual – they can do surgery to open airways, or to bypass them.

Finally, someone asked them what they got sent out for most often and how we could avoid having to take a trip in their copter.  Their answer was “helmets”.  The woman who answered also told us that emergency flights were now costing around $30,000, but that you could buy insurance from Cal Star at calstar.org. for $45 a year for a family.  I’m going to do it; we have insurance, but between mountain biking and horse riding, I spend a lot of time in places where ambulances would have a hard time getting to and the last thing I want to worry about if I get hurt is if my insurance company is going to pay for my transportation.

By the way, the helicopter lesson took place at the helicopter; Sunny and I were standing just outside the tips of the rotors – so we both got a chance to get up close.

It was a nice ride in great weather in a beautiful place, and I learned quite a few things. And Sunny was perfectly behaved. Can’t ask for more than that.

wanna ride?

donna

I hadn’t planned on telling this tale, but I’ve found myself telling it to every horse person I run into, so it must have made quite and impression on me – so maybe it’s worth blogging about.

On Monday, Sunny and I set out for a ride by ourselves.  I’m trying to keep her mileage up and increase her pace in preparation for next year’s NATRC Competitive Trail Riding (CTR) season, and after last winter, this winter we’ll ride any day it’s not raining, starting now.  We went to Ft. Ord; there’s a hill there, on Guidotti Trail, that I thought would be a good stiff climb for Sunny.

Our route was our Regular, until we turned onto Toro Creek Trail, which runs along the back side of a neighborhood, rather than our usual turn into the interior of the park.  We’d ridden Toro Creek before with Cory and Jade, so I knew there was a school there, and that the trail runs along the back of the playground and baseball diamond, with a chain link fence separating the school from the trail.  And we’d even been there when a few kids had been on the playground, which had made Sunny a little nervous, so I was prepared for her to be worried.

I was NOT prepared for the playground to be filled with playing kids.  Neither was Sunny.  She saw that playground full of motion and kids screaming and balls bouncing, and just went totally still with her ears parallel to the ground and every muscle engaged.  I couldn’t get her to face away from the chaos, but we’d started side-passing along the fence, when I saw two little girls realize that we were out there – this is no kidding – I saw their little heads go up, swivel and lock on Sunny, then, in unison, they headed for us at a dead run, waving and yelling.  By the time they got to the fence, I’d hopped off Sunny because it was not feeling healthy on her back.

The girls hit the fence with a clang and started telling me what a pretty horse Sunny is, and how they’d ridden a horse at the fair, and . . . By this time they had been joined by about 10 other little girls. They were all bouncing into the chain link fence, trying to get as close to Sunny as possible, all talking at once.   I had Sunny on my rope reins connected to her halter and she was imitating a kite – she kept me between the kids and herself and just kept moving.  I think she was being as good as she could force herself to be:  she never hit the end of the lead line, but she couldn’t stay still and she couldn’t consider focusing on the little girls.

They so clearly loved the notion of a horse that I couldn’t bring myself to just leave, so I tried to listen to each of them as they told me about their horse experiences, and answer their questions.  The end came when one of them asked how old Sunny was and I said seven.  “SEVEN??!!”  WE’RE SEVEN!!!!” And the place *really* came unglued.  Sunny and all the girls were so excited they were all hopping up and down in place.  I thought we’d reached some sort of maximum excitement level, when four little boys came over to see what the noise was and started climbing the fence!

I couldn’t figure out how to end it.  I tried just sort of easing away, but they all followed, banging the fence as they came, setting Sunny off even more.  And the higher she got, the prettier everyone (but me!) thought she looked.  (For those of you who know Sunny – no kidding, she really *did* look like an Arab; a *big* Arab that takes up a lot of space.)

Finally, a teacher noticed that some adult was probably trying to kidnap her charges by luring them away with a pony, and started running over, blowing a whistle. The kids drug themselves away and Sunny and I backed down the trail.  I hand-walked her for a few yards, then remounted. Within . . . a minute we encountered a woman on a bicycle accompanied by two loose Jack Russell terriers. They were actually very well behaved, but Sunny had a hard time figuring out what she was looking at, and I anticipated a Terrier-ist Attack, so we talked ourselves into thinking it was a pretty big deal. Then we came across a parked BLM truck, which would have *wouldn’t* have been a big deal, but there was a guy in the truck figuring out something on one of those huge, folding maps – which he stuck out the window as we passed.  Anyhow, by the time we got to Guidotti (about a quarter mile), Sunny was in a great mood for a long hill climb.  It took her about a mile to calm down enough to take a break and eat some grass. What a trip!

Anybody have any thoughts on what I should have done differently?  We survived, but I suspect Sunny is less confident with respect to the school, and playgrounds in general, than she was before this experience, which I feel badly about.  But the little girls sure were cute – and I think that I know a lot of women who would have been at that fence when they were seven!

wanna ride?

donna

My mother-in-law, Kelly, will be coming to visit us in a few weeks.  Kelly went with me when I picked up Sunny in Oregon three years ago, and then last summer (as in 14 months ago) she went to the Jackson Forest  NATRC Competitive Trail Ride (CTR) to crew for us and roughed it in the camper. When we were chatting about her plans for her visit this year, she said she’d love to crew for us on a ride again, so I checked around and found a CTR in Region 2 (So Cal), near Santa Ynez, the first week in November, and signed up for it.

I got an email from the organizers confirming that I was in the ride. The opening sentence was, “Sure hope your horse loves cows!”  My horse does *not* love cows. She doesn’t love calves or bulls or heifers (whatever those are) either. Up until Saturday, she’s seen them twice and both times almost . . . had a cow.  Since Kelly will probably be at the ride with me, and I think she would be unwilling to drive the truck and trailer home while I recovered from getting dumped, I decided to be proactive and introduce Sunny to cattle before the ride.  I spammed all my horse friends, asking for pointers on how to get cow exposure. Sue Flagg, my original NATRC mentor, suggested “Cows 101″, a beginning cow clinic put on by Kathy Roberts, in Granite Bay.

Sue’s recommendation was based primarily on the fact that Kathy takes it slow, and she allows the more timid horses to rely on the more confident ones in order to learn to be confident themselves.  I gave Kathy a call and explained that we were NOT cow savvy. She said all Sunny had to do was go forward, backward, turn right and left, and stop.  When I said that Sunny could do those things, I honestly thought that she could.

Yoli, Esther, Marybeth, and Sheryl at Lake Camanche

Anyhow, we signed up for the class, which was held from 9 – 12 last Saturday, October 15, in Granite Bay.  We left Santa Cruz on Thursday afternoon and went as far as Marybeth’s. On Friday, Susan, from Saddles That Fit, came down and re-jiggered Sunny’s saddle, then Marybeth, Esther, Yoli and Sheryl and I all went for a trail ride at Lake  Camanche.

Saturday morning, Sunny and I left Marybeth’s promptly at 6 AM and made it to Kathy’s place just before 8 AM.  Kathy’s husband and roping partner, Elliot, met us in the driveway and, after I got Sunny and her equipment out, parked my truck/camper/trailer for me – pretty nice service.  He also took me to the barn, where I could put all my junk and get Sunny groomed.  While I was there, I met Christine and Cash, who were my life preservers during the clinic.  Christine boards Cash there and has done several of these clinics. She was doing this one today with her niece, Alexis.

Christine, my Heroine, on Cash

I got Sunny cleaned and tacked up and went out to the arena. It is huge, probably 45 – 50 yards long, and about 35 – 40 yards wide.  At one end, there was a pen inside the arena, with a gate opening into the arena.  In the rest of the arena, there were two tall poles, three barrels and a traffic cone set up.

Alexis, One of my Rescuers

There were nine cows and calves (two heifers with their calves, and 5 calves) fenced in between the arena fence and the property fence line, so they were sort of walking the arena boundary.  I hand-walked Sunny around the arena and she was plenty worried about the cows.  At this point, Elliot rode up on his roping horse and invited us to get a little closer to the cattle, so I mounted up and we rode close to the part of the fence where the cattle were. Sunny got really nervous, but I just kept her behind Elliot’s horse and she survived.

Elliot counseled me to seriously keep an eye on the cows because they can be unpredictable and you want to stop surprises before they happen, particularly with a new horse. He also told me, very firmly, “Shoulders back, heels down!”  I swear I tried, but . . .

Kathy got started promptly at nine.  She first explained how to move cattle.  As I understood it, it’s a lot like working with horses in the round pen:  if you are anywhere behind them, you’re driving them; if you are in front of them, you’re blocking them. the amount you’re blocking or pushing depends on your exact position and the personality of the cattle you’re trying to move. To move them in the direction you want, you have to constantly keep adjusting your position with regard to them, either encouraging or blocking movement in a given direction.  It’s important to keep them together in a relatively tight herd; if they get separated, they get independent, but as long as they are close together, they tend to follow the leader.  So, in order to move them effectively, you need drivers, who work from the back of the herd, and blockers, who keep the herd going the way you want them to.

Kathy then made the point that we were going to do everything as slowly as possible.  When you’re actually on a working ranch, there’s a premium placed on quietness – every time you run a cow, you’re burning off weight, and cattle are sold by the pound. So the calmer the whole experience is, the fewer dollars are lost.   And the way it turned out, I think I saw people trotting their horses maybe three times all day – everything else was done at a walk, if you don’t count Sunny’s levitations.

At this point, I was feeling pretty confident.  Then Elliot, who had been setting up while Kathy was talking, drove the nine cattle into the arena. With us!  Yikes!  Elliot and a couple of the people who had been there before drove the cattle down to the end of the arena, where we all gathered round.  Remember when I told Kathy that Sunny could, in fact, go forward and back, etc?  Well, I lied.  Sunny wouldn’t move forward for anything.  She didn’t back up, but her feet were *glued* in place.

Not too long after we got there, Kathy said, “Okay, let’s move them around the arena.” Gulp. So all about 10 of us students, and Kathy and Elliot, starting moving the cattle. When the other horses started going, Sunny was finally able to move her feet and we followed along at the back.  She didn’t always go straight forward; we did quite a lot of side passing, and a little backing, too, but we survived, and the cattle were pretty quickly back where they started.

The next challenge was to split the herd.  Our instructions were to go into the herd, find a gap between cattle, and ride through it, functionally splitting the herd while letting our horses get more used to the cows.  We were doing it in teams of two and Christine volunteered to go with me. She and Cash led, and Sunny and sort of followed.  By that time, Sunny was a pretty tight little horse and, again, I could hardly get her to move forward.  She followed Cash, but sideways.  But we made it.  We had to do that several more times, and Sunny didn’t get appreciably more comfortable.

Our next move was to divide into teams of three and drive the cattle in patterns that Kathy described as we set off.  It seemed crazy, but, as the day went on, the patterns got more demanding, and the performance of the students got steadily better.  The first pattern was simple:

Pattern 1 - Through the Poles and Around the Barrels

We just had to move the cattle from where they had gathered, through two poles, up the middle of the arena, then down the fence line.  Probably every team “lost” cattle on this exercise.  The next pattern was slightly more complicated:

Pattern 2 - Through the Poles and Around the Barrels the Other Way

Out through the poles, hard left turn, up the fence line, around the farthest barrel, and back down the middle.  Then, with the third pattern, things got really crazy:

All Around the Barrels and Back

Take the herd between the right pole and pen fence, hard left to the fence, back around the first barrel, over to the traffic cone, around the cone, back to the fence, do a 360 around the barrel, then back along the fence!

Channeling the Cows - see how the paint horse is sort of pointed at them; that's pushing them away from him, around the barrel

There were a couple more patterns after that, but I don’t remember them.  At this point, Sunny reached her boiling point. We had been sort of permanent drivers – the people at the back – because it was clear that Sunny was worried about the cows.  The way to build confidence is to let the timid horses drive because the cows move away from the horses.  The only problem is that sometimes the cows didn’t – and the first time a calf stopped and looked at Sunny, she went straight up and over about 5 yards. I stayed on, but ended up with my arms wrapped around her neck and my face in her mane as she lurched to a stop.  Kathy and Elliot were yelling, “Heels down!  Shoulders back!”, but it didn’t help, it was way too late.

Hurrying to Block an Escape - the cows are pretty spread out and a couple are trying to dodge out, so the white horse is pulling up to block

We continued to drive and Sunny continued to be concerned, doing those dramatic leaps probably 5 more times during the course of the morning.  I think we did get better, but the rest of the class got a *lot* better:  the first pattern we did, all the teams lost multiple cattle, that is, they didn’t get them to do the pattern properly. By the time we were working on the last, really complex, pattern, there were several perfect runs; people were really getting the picture.

The White Horse is Driving, Sunny's Job on our Team

After we ran through all the patterns, we moved the herd into the pen in the arena, and did what Kathy called “Penning Lite”.  In team penning, you and your partner have to separate a specific cow from the herd and move it out of the pen.   One of you goes into the herd and works the cow, the other one guards the gate to make sure no other cows get out. When the one who is working the cow gets close to the gate, the gate guard moves away from the gate (in the direction that will NOT discourage the on-coming cow), then, as soon as the cow is out, moves back to block again.

In this version of penning, you had to separate a target-of-opportunity cow (Kathy said, “Look for a volunteer!”) from the herd and move it out, rather than one specific cow.  Sunny and I didn’t participate in this directly – neither of those jobs sounded plausible to us. However, when the people got the cow out the gate, it came into the arena, sometimes at high speed.  And when all the cattle were out of the pen, we had to drive them back into it again, so more people could do the team penning thing.  Sooo, Sunny and I stood around the gate and, as soon as a cow came out, we started trying to move it to somewhere in the arena. When the next cow came out, we tried to get it to where the other one was, etc.  In addition, some of the cattle really came flying out of the pen, giving Sunny more of an opportunity to develop some braveness.

The penning activity went on for about an hour and a half, giving us quite a long time to wander around. By the end of it, Sunny was actually much braver.  She certainly didn’t look as good as the other horses, but I think, if you could measure improvement relative to where you were at 8:59 AM vs. where you were at 12:01 PM, Sunny might have made the most headway.

After the clinic proper, Kathy and Elliot served a hamburger lunch that looked great.  Sunny and I took off before we could try it, though, because we had to get back to Santa Cruz that afternoon, so we had a long, hot drive in front of us.

All in all, it was one of the better ways I’ve spent $60. We had a good time and learned a lot.  Most of the people were kind and supportive, even though we doomed any team we got assigned to during the driving patterns part of the day.  And Kathy and Elliot both hung in there with us, although we added a lot more chaos to the experience than there would have been without us.  And Christine frequently *invited* us to work with her and Cash, for which I will be eternally grateful.  I’ve asked Kathy to put us on her email list because we’d like to come back and try it again – I hope she doesn’t “misplace” our address, although I’d understand if she did!

wanna ride?

donna

As The Husband says, tl:dr – that is, “too long: don’t read”. For whatever reason, I really got detail oriented in this write-up, so if you don’t want to know every thing that happened on this 19 mile ride, just read the summary. For those of you with some time, read on!

Sunny and I on the trail - and, yes, my bib does always hang down and I am always trying to read my map!

Executive summary:  Sunny and I went to the NATRC ride at Cowboy Camp.  It was stinkin’ hot.  We had fun anyway.

The Run Up

When this year’s NATRC Competitive Trail Ride (CTR) schedule was posted, there were seven rides planned for Nor Cal, I think.  However, this year was crazy; between the winter weather lasting into July in the mountains and the EHV-1 panic, rides got cancelled right and left – and when Sunny and I finished Jackson Forest, it turned out that we had managed to do all the rides (three!) thus far in the season, and there was only one left, Cowboy Camp.  I love doing the rides, so I’d probably have gone anyway, but since it *was* the last one of the season, I was especially motivated because I’d be able to say that, for at least one year, I’d done every NATRC CTR in Nor Cal.

Cowboy Camp is about 20 miles west of Williams, which is in the Central Valley on Hwy 5, between Sacramento and Red Bluff.  The ride was one that had been originally scheduled for May, but got moved to September because of the EHV-1 lock-down.  The reason it was planned for Spring is that it gets ungodly *hot* there in the summer and fall.  So about three weeks before the ride, I took a look at the weather predictions for the area:  95°, 97°, 97°, 98°, 96°, . . . And every time after that when I looked at the National Weather Service site it was the same – nothing under 95, lots over 100!

It’s been a *cold* summer in Santa Cruz: at our barn, we’re talking about blanketing some of the older horses in the pasture NOW because of the low temperatures and the fog; Sunny’s winter coat is almost complete.  I decided that I’d have to trailer out to the heat to get her used to it.  Here are the places we went and the temperatures we encountered:

• Calero Park in Morgan Hill – 75°
• Calero Park, visit #2 – 78°
• Mt Madonna, in the hills above Gilroy, visit #1 – 72°
• Mt Madonna, visit #2 – 78°
• Mt Madonna, visit #3 – 76°
• Bonny Doon. I’m whinging to my friend Judy about not being able to find heat to train in. She says, “Come on up to our place – it’s 93° today!”  I throw Sunny in the trailer the next morning and drive to Bonny Doon.  It’s 65°. We rode for 13 miles and never took our sweaters off.

Sheesh!  For those of you who don’t know the area, those are all super-hot spots:  Morgan Hill and Gilroy are in the Valley and substantial parts of both Calero and Mt Madonna are in “pockets” in the hills, where the wind doesn’t reach and the heat just seems to pool.  I would have said that running into temps like those in August and September at those places was impossible – just shows how wrong I can be.

I finally gave up and decided that maybe I’d take my cool weather hoodoo with me to Cowboy Camp so all this worrying would be for nothing.  However, just in case my mere appearance didn’t pull down the Cowboy Camp temps, I decided that Sunny would do hill work in lieu of heat work – I may not be able to find heat, but I surely know where the hills are.  So that’s what we did.

We Get to Cowboy Camp

It’s a pretty long haul to Cowboy Camp and it was going to be hot, so I split the trip into two days.  We left on Thursday afternoon and spent the night in Marybeth’s back yard, then continued on to Cowboy Camp on Friday AM.  We got there about 1:30 PM.  My friend Laura, whom some of you know, had been up the previous weekend, marking the trails.  She told me to park with my trailer tack room (the side I like to tie Sunny on) facing the road, which would make it shady in the afternoon. This was great advice,  since people with truck thermometers were reporting temps between 105° and 110°!  The temp on the next day, when we were to ride, was supposed to fall by 10°, so it would only be . . . 100°.  Ah, only 100°. Now I feel better.

Note to self:  I parked on the perimeter of ride camp, and Sunny was tied on the side of my trailer that did NOT face the rest of the camp.  I had parked at a slight angle, so Sunny couldn’t see Laura’s horse, Tango, and she couldn’t see any other horses who were in the interior of the camp.  She survived, but she was definitely more on edge than she had to be. I think it would have been easier on her if I’d made sure she could see, as well as hear, other horses.

Laura and Tango and Sunny and I roused ourselves to walk out to the river next to camp, about a half mile. Sunny enjoyed the drink, but Tango loved just being *in* the water: he got belly deep and madly thrashed with his front legs – water went everywhere. We were all refreshed by Tango’s efforts, so we returned to camp, where we wilted again.

As the sun went down, though, it cooled off nicely and by the time we had our ride meeting, it was comfortable.  At the meeting, the ride manager announced that, due to the heat, the route was shortened for the Open and Competitive Pleasure teams, and Novices (that’s us) got extra time to do certain parts of the ride.  The “trailmaster” apologized for a three mile downhill with no shade – boy, did I not want to hear about that!

After the meeting, I headed off to bed. Unfortunately, Sunny was up and alert pretty much all night, which means that I was, too. I think she thought she had responsibility for keeping the whole camp safe, otherwise why would she be stationed way out on the outskirts of civilization, not in sight of a single other horse?  In any case, she was restless and, since all of my camper’s doors, vents, and windows were open, I heard her every time she moved. It was a long night for both of us.

The Ride Begins

The ride manager honked a horn at 5 AM so we could get up and get ready for a 7 AM start. It always amazes me how long it takes to get me together – we made it to the start on time, but just barely.  Laura and I were planning to ride together and when we got to the Out Timer (the person who records the time you leave), there were a bunch of juniors waiting to start, including Carli and Jody, with whom we’d ridden at Jackson Forest.  Laura and I were pretty sure that the girls wanted to ride with the other juniors, but the horses sort of made the decision for them:  Hot Shot and Cayley were hitting the trail with Tango and Sunny. End of story. So we all took off together, with plans to try to split up a little on the trail.

Oh yeah, before I left Santa Cruz, I had put Emma’s rosette on Sunny’s headstall to make sure I remembered to take it along  – I moved it to my bib to remind me to Ride Like Emma.  It worked for us at Jackson Forest, and I figured we needed all the luck and inspiration we could get at Cowboy Camp.

The trail out was a skinny path through star thistle, which Sunny tip-toed through, followed by really tall grass – like tall enough so that I couldn’t see anywhere but straight ahead.  I was surprised that it didn’t seem to bother any of the horses at all.  After about a half mile, we came to a creek that we had to cross. All our horses stopped for a drink – smart ponies – and after we crossed we hit the trail system that we’d be on for the rest of the ride. The ride was on jeep trails, for the most part, so you could ride comfortably side by side, but you didn’t feel like you were riding your horse on a freeway, and the surface was very nice.

Starting the Ride, with Tango Leading the Way

Almost immediately, we headed up hill.  I think that climb went on for almost six miles, with just a couple of significant descents.  When we started uphill, it was still cool, and there was even a breeze at some points.  As usual this season, Tango was on a mission, so he led up the hill.  I made Sunny stick with Tango, and we tried to get some distance on Carli and Jody, so they could have their own ride, but, again, Hot Shot and Cayley weren’t buying it, so after a few failed efforts, we just settled in together. Fortunately, Jody and Carli are beautifully mannered adolescents, and didn’t seem to mind riding with us.

The trail wound up and up and up, with several “local maximums”, that provided great views, and the vistas widened every time we reached a higher point.  It was getting warmer and the trail was a pretty steady climb, with some seriously steep pitches in it, so we stopped to take in all the views and let the horses have a few minutes to huff and puff, which they were all doing.  And Sunny was sweating like a pig, much more than the other horses, so I was a little worried – although she had much more of a winter coat than they did, too.

One of our "Huff 'n Puff" Stops

The First P & R

At about the six mile point, coming up a steep pitch of the hill, we saw Carol, the horsemanship judge, perched by the left side of the trail, and the photographer to the right side.  Sunny was leading at that point, so she got nervous, but she couldn’t decide which person to spook from, so she just marched straight up the hill. Whew!  Since the horsemanship judge and the vet and the P & R (pulse and respiration ) crews all travel together, we weren’t surprised when there was a P & R/vet check at the top of the hill, about 100 yards from the photographer.

The View Coming into a P & R

At the P & Rs, you’re given a time as you enter, then you wait 10 minutes, and then a volunteer checks your horse’s pulse and respiration rates – measuring the horse’s recovery rate under stress (the hill).  The pulse and breath rate are both measured for 15 seconds – so you have to multiply by 4 to get the heartbeats per minute or the breaths per minute.  Anyhow, the typical NATRC rule is “16’s a go, 17’s a hold” – so if either pulse rate or breath rate is over 64 per minute, they won’t let your horse go on, at least immediately.  (There’s a process for continuing, but it doesn’t figure in this story, so I’m going to ignore it.)

So Sunny and I entered the P&R area and got our vet card with our entry time on it.  I dismounted, loosened Sunny’s girth, and we got into the line to wait our 10 minutes.  My job during this time is to make Sunny as calm as possible – which, in Sunny’s case, means that I should ask her to put her head down – Marybeth’s Horsey Yoga – and keep it there and I should just sit with her. Which is what I did.  After 10 minutes, the vet check team descended on us.  It took awhile – I think the fella had trouble believing the numbers, but he finally came up with 9 and 3; that is a heartrate of 36 bpm and a respiration rate of 12 breaths per minute.  Whew!  No more worries about lack of fitness – those are great numbers, particularly in the heat.

The next challenge was to get water in Sunny. There had been another EHV-1 episode at an ACTHA event two weeks before our ride, so we all had to take precautions: the vet took all the horse’s temperatures at check-in, and the owner’s had to take it twice more on Friday, then pre-ride and post-ride on Saturday, and post the results on the side of their trailers. Another precaution was that no horses could drink directly from the huge water tanks management had for us, in order to prevent an infected horse from passing the virus via shared water.  There were a bunch of scoops around each tank, and each rider was supposed to have their own collapsible bucket with them. To get your horse a drink, you’d use the scoop to get water from the tank into your bucket, then your horse would drink from your collapsible bucket.  Unfortunately, the buckets openings are about as big as Sunny’s nose, and we hadn’t had much of a chance to practice. Fortunately, she really takes care of herself, so once she realized that there was water in there, she was all over that bucket, and drained it twice. Another perfect job.

After the P & R,  we headed for the vet check.  It’s a frequent practice that the vets at these things will ask us to do a task that shows our horse’s manners and our horsemanship, and he/she grades the horse’s manners and reports on the rider’s skills to the horsemanship judge. In this case, we were told to mount after we’d watered our horses, and ride down to a point and wait for the vet to call us.  When he called, we rode down to directly in front of him and dismounted, testing the horse’s ability to leave her buddies. He then did a more detailed check of Sunny:  capillary refill, muscle tone, sensitivity, etc.  He then had me trot Sunny, in hand, about 50 yards, then mount and ride away still further from her buddies.  Sunny did really well, and we stopped about 50 yards from where we started to wait for the rest of our posse.

The Pond

After that, it was just three miles or so to lunch, where there was hay and water for the horses and whatever we’d sent out for ourselves. I’d filled my cooler with carrots and sweet feed, so Sunny had her choice of food.  We got 45 minutes for lunch, so we pulled their saddles and ate our lunches with the horses.  The only excitement was when Tango realized that Laura still had a horse cookie in her saddle bag, along with her water bottles and he decided to go after the cookie.  The 45 minutes went by really quickly, but we managed, as a group, to leave on time.

Tango Looking for Horse Cookies

Directly out of lunch, we had to do this long climb up through a canyon – it was the hottest it had been all day, and it was a couple mile climb.  We finally made it to the top and started descending.  Pretty soon we could see horses hanging out ahead of us, then we could see that they were gathered around a pond.  Well, Tango *flew* to the pond and marched in.  Then he marched in deeper. Then he dropped and started to roll – all this with Laura on his back!  Laura convinced him not to go all the way over, but, in the meantime, he’d been an example to all the other horses and they were *all* cavorting in the pond – wandering around in it and splashing away.  We spend probably 15 minutes at the pond getting good and cooled off, but then we had to take off.

Tango Leading the Way - into the Pond

Everyone Gets into the Act

The End of the Line

The next P & R was at about 14 or 15 miles, I think, and we had to trot the last maybe quarter mile into it, but Sunny pulsed down really quickly again.  After we passed the P & R check, we had to walk our horses, in hand, to the vet for him to check them out. When he completed his exam, he said, “You have 15 seconds to get on this horse and get out of here.  Go!”  It was pretty unexpected: NATRC things are usually very deliberate, but I trotted over to a log, Sunny stepped up to it, and I hopped on. We must have made it okay because it didn’t show up as a deduction on our vet card.   We then proceeded to the Carol, the horsemanship judge.  She had us walk through a little obstacle course made of downed logs – over this one, around that one, over another one between two ribbons, stop here . . . – then we were free to take off on the last leg of the ride.

Jody and Hot Shot Negotiate the Obstacle

Carli Gets Instructions from the Horsemanship Judge

Sunny and I were first through the vet/horsemanship check, so we waited for the others. When we were all gathered, off we went.  It was mostly a descent, so the next two miles went really quickly – and we arrived at the Two Mile Point.  In NATRC rides, you have to have “forward motion” from the Two Mile Point to the end of the ride. The reason for this is that the judges *could* decide to have a P & R check right at the finish.  If some teams got just short of the end, then stopped for ten minutes and let their horses rest, then walked over the finish line, but other teams didn’t stop at all, it wouldn’t be a fair comparison of the horses’ fitness.

Note:  It seems like I’m spending a lot of time explaining NATRC rules in this post. Sorry!   On this particular rule, I can almost hear someone saying, “But you shouldn’t be penalized for setting your horse up to win; the riders who stopped and rested were just thinking ahead.”  I think the issue with that line of thinking is that the metabolic measurements are counted toward the *horse’s* score, not the rider’s – so it might be true that the rider should get credit for good management, but it wouldn’t allow for consistent evaluations of the horses.

Anyhow, we had gotten ahead of the minimum time and, in NATRC, you are penalized for every minute you come in *before* the minimum time and for every minute you come in *after the minimum plus 30 minutes* – they are a lot more worried about “Yee Haw!” riders than they are about slowpokes like Sunny and me.  (And I know – yet another rule explained!)  Sooo, we joined a pretty large group killing time, waiting until they’d be able to do a comfortable pace and make it to the finish somewhere between the minimum time and minimum time plus 30 minutes.

The Two Mile Point was at the bottom of a hill, and we had to cross a dry creek bed to continue. (I haven’t mentioned it, but we must have crossed 15 dry stream beds – this would have been a wet ride if it had been in the Spring!)  The creek bed was full of just-slightly-larger-than-base-rock rocks and a couple of horses immediately picked up stones in their hooves, including Tango. You’re supposed to carry a hoof pick on these rides, Laura was, and she was able to remove the stone immediately. The other horse had a *huge* rock wedged between his shoe and his frog and his rider couldn’t get it out, and she was really prying, enough to be moving the shoe.  Finally, Kay Leibernecht, who is a NATRC mainstay (she’s written a few articles for the Region 1 website, including a great one on how to introduce juniors to NATRC) and a farrier, got off her horse and gave it a try.  She said that she’s learned that, in some cases, the right approach is to apply a lot of force really quickly, instead of the slow pry.  Kay positioned the hoof pick and really jumped on it and out popped the rock. Another lesson learned.

The Last Mile

Finally, we took off, thinking that we had waited plenty long. What we didn’t take into account was that the horses knew where camp was and that we were close – they all took off like they were late for their coffee break.  Jody and Hot Shot ended up saving us:  we put them in front and told Jody to show us how slow a Quarterhorse could go, and she was able to get Hot Shot to maintain a stately 1.7 mph pace.  None of the other horses were happy about staying behind Hot Shot, but we were able to keep their noses aligned with each other’s butts and adhere to Hot Shot’s superb example.  We finally got to the creek we had to cross on the way out and the horses stopped for a looooonnnnng drink of water and some splashing around and we were able to just walk in the rest of the way.

The Awards

Sunny was definitely glad to get back to the now-shady trailer, get her saddle off, and settle into some alfalfa and water.  I got her cleaned up and took a shower.  I hadn’t turned on the hot water heater in the camper, so it was a sort of cold shower and it felt GREAT!  We vetted out when it was our turn and came back to the trailer. By this time it was cooling off, so Sunny and I both drifted off until it was time for the awards.  I was happy to finish and to be able to say that we did ALL the rides in Nor Cal.  There was a pretty large contingent of Novices, so I didn’t have much expectation of success.  However, it turned out that there were only two Lightweight Novices – the rest were mostly Juniors – so Sunny won Best Horse.

At the very end of the awards, they announce the Sweepstakes horses – at this ride, “Sweepstakes” is best horse in class, so in our class, Novice, it was the horse that received the best overall vet score, a combination of metabolics, soundness, attitude and manners, from among the Novice Junior, Lightweight, Middleweight and Heavyweight entries.  And Sunny won it.  AND she won it with a perfect vet card!  We must have been doing *something* like Emma!

wanna ride?

donna

Practicing Driving

So.  This is going to sound really sappy, but it’s All True, so I’m tellin’ it like it happened.

Last . . . April, maybe, I did a presentation about Competitive Trail Riding (CTR – the real name for NATRC rides) for the Santa Cruz Horsemen’s Association, which I belong to.  Fortunately, I was really clear that I didn’t speak for the organization, and that it was just my own, newbie opinion of the sport. I say “Fortunately” because about 2 minutes before I was to start, Emma McCrary and her daughter walked in.

Those of you who aren’t from Santa Cruz may not recognize the name, so I’ll fill you in.  Emma was  82, I think, when she came to my presentation.  I had met Emma before, but we just moved in separate horse circles:  she wrote and published a book on natural horsemanship in *1979* (Influencing Horses) and stayed passionate about horses, while I was in the group of wannabes who were glued to the TV screen, trying to memorize the Pat Parelli DVDs. (It was before I met Marybeth!)

Emma had been riding NATRC rides since the very beginning of the sport, in the 70’s, and had put on her own NATRC ride for about 20 years, I think.  And when I say “her own NATRC ride”, I’m being literal: the McCrary family are Big Creek Lumber, with access to thousands of acres of forest along the Central Coast, and Emma cut trails for her rides through that property. Actually, she was responsible for many of the trails even in the Santa Cruz county state parks.  True story:  Linda Thomason, a local NATRC rider, once went out with Emma to clear and mark trails for a ride and Emma cut branches off trees while mounted on her horse. With a chainsaw! Sheesh.

Anyhow, when Emma walked in, I gulped hard – all I needed was *real* expert in the audience.  So when I started, I asked Emma to help me out when I got stuck and then just dove in.  Emma was great. I’d glance over at her, and she’d be nodding and smiling. A couple of times I got asked questions about rules and processes, and Emma jumped right in.  By the end of the presentation, we were rolling; somewhere in there we described a NATRC ride as a long stinkin’ trail ride on someone else’s favorite trails, with a potluck at the beginning and a barbeque at the end.  It was really fun.

After the presentation, I went over to where Emma was standing, to thank her for her support.  Emma quickly got that out of the way, so I asked her if she was going to be doing any rides this season, to which she replied, “I’m doing all of them.”  “All of them?”, I said, pretty surprised, since she had been very ill, in and out of the hospital all winter.  She said firmly, “All of them.”

This season has been crazy for NATRC rides; because of the herpes virus, all the rides but one got rescheduled, so when I didn’t see Emma at the rides, I figured that the scheduling just hadn’t worked out.  Then I  got a phone call:  she had died of pancreatic cancer.  There was a memorial service for her at the end of July, which was attended by literally hundreds of people, most of them involved with horses in some way. At the service, small purple rosettes, with a horse pin in the center were handed out.  I put my rosette on my overshirt that I wear for horse tending, so it pretty much stayed with me.

On the weekend of August 20-21, the Jackson Forest CTR (remember?  The real name for a NATRC ride?) was held in, no kidding, Jackson Forest.  Jackson Forest, just inland from Ft. Bragg, is one of two demonstration forests in California, and is beautiful.  Ride camp is in the middle of a grove of huge trees, with a stream running through it.  We couldn’t use them during the competitive part of the ride, of course, but there are paddocks for horse camping when you’re not competing.  I went to this ride last year and, in addition to being in a beautiful place, it’s a favorite because it’s a really relaxed, calm ride from beginning to end.

It was a long drive up from Santa Cruz but Laura and her dad had saved us a place to park our rig.  As a result, I was able to quickly set up camp and get Sunny vetted in, so she could settle in at our campsite, which she was able to do almost immediately, since she was butt-to-butt with Laura’s horse Tango – whom she hates on the trail, but loves in camp.  Poor Tango.   Shortly after, I toddled off for the potluck part of the ride, where it seems like everyone there asked me about Emma’s memorial service.  After dinner, the ride manager described the trail markings for the various classes, and then sent us off to bed.

Surprisingly, to me at least, it was really quite cool. When the alarm sounded at 5:30 AM, it was *darned* cold, so I put on a jacket and my overshirt while feeding and tacking up Sunny.  Any time after your horse has been vetted in, you have to wear a bib with your number on it so that judges can identify you if you do something particularly stupid, so when I pulled my bib over my shirt, the bib stuck on the rosette.  I pulled it off my shirt and put it on my bib; it occurred to me that the constant reminder of Emma might make me ride like Emma, too.

Just as I was about ready to gather Sunny up and head for the start, the ride manager asked if Laura and I would “sponsor” a couple of eleven year old juniors, Carli and Jody.  Juniors have to be accompanied by an adult sponsor in order to do a NATRC ride, for obvious reasons. These two were students of the woman who did all the trail marking, route mapping, and trail clearing, so we were particularly glad to be able to pay something back. And, ultimately, these juniors bailed me out – they had helped mark the trail, and as a result, saved me from a couple of wrong turns!  Also, the juniors, Carli and Jody, had horses that matched Sunny – tiny chestnuts with a lot of chrome.  As we took off, we looked like a very poorly organized drill team.

Anyway, we left camp in a heavy fog.  Tango is on a mission to prove he can do Open next year, so  Laura and Tango were in the lead, Carli & Caley and Jody & Hotshot in the middle, and Sunny and me bringing up the rear.  The first obstacle was to cross a good-sized creek.  When we got there, there was a horse “stuck” on the creek edge; he just couldn’t get his feet wet.   The judges gestured for us to come down and cross, rather than wait.  Laura and the kids got through stylishly, but when Sunny and I got there, the horse spun and started back up the path.  So Sunny did, too, for a short bit, but she settled down, turned around and crossed the creek.

For the curious, the stuck horse was a new partner for a very experienced rider and they were riding with another very experienced team.  The two “teams” waited until all the other horses had gone through, then worked the horse across. Ultimately, the rider put a halter on the nervous horse, and the person who was riding with them led the horse across the creek with the rider aboard.  They passed us near the end of that day’s ride.  I love The NATRC Way.

Just after we got out of the creek, we had to cross Highway 20, which was really busy.  There were volunteers sort of spotting for us, but crossing a road with fast traffic with a multiple horse “train” is always worrisome, since if one horse goes, they *all* go, or at least want to.  We waited a few minutes to get a good long gap and got across safely.

The ride was a little over 20 miles, I think, and it stayed cold all day.  Sunny and I brought up the rear for most of the ride, so I got to watch Carli and Jody.  Somewhere around the mid-point of the ride, they started listing parts of their horses (and themselves) that corresponded to parts of a car:  stomach/gas tank, nose/air filter, arms/turn signals, etc.- see the photo at the top of the post.  This conversation ended up continuing for the rest of that day’s ride and into the next.

The ride was beautiful, but uneventful until the last couple of miles.  Just after the two mile point (two miles left to go), the route left the fire road we were on, and had us hop up a steep little hill.  Sunny and I hopped okay, but she was *shocked* to see a bench at the top of the bank!  Then we had to cross a little wooden bridge, which was *far* too narrow for a horse of her massive size!  It was outrageous!  Sunny really was beside herself. Shortly thereafter, *I* was beside myself – there was a . . . 5 yard drop that was truly in the “Man from Snowy River” realm of steepness – Sunny went down on her butt.  Whew!

We had to re-cross Highway 20 right after that, but it was a non-issue this time, and there was no extra horse standing in the creek, so Sunny just marched through.  I found out later that, for the first time, the horsemanship judge felt that I rode Sunny “all the way through” the creek.  Still not sure what I did differently but I hope to do it again! We finished about 3 PM, cleaned up the horses, and went to the awards for the one-day riders, and dinner.

On the second day, the juniors consented to ride with us again, so we met up at the start.  Just as we were going off, the Ride Manager asked us if Alexis could ride with us. Alexis was a first time rider who came with an Open rider. They rode together the first day, but the Open route was different enough from the Novice route on Day 2 so that it wasn’t practical for them to stay together. So there were five of us.

Alexis had just graduated from an EMT course, done her ride-alongs, and had a job waiting for her when she passed the state-level exam.  She had been introduced to horses just a year or so ago and found that they were tremendously effective therapy for her after spending her days dealing with the results of horrific accidents.  She told me that 90% of EMTs leave their jobs within 3 years of being hired. There are lots of potential reasons for that, but at least part of the resignations must be due to the stress. I can’t imagine a better therapy than horses – when you’re with them, you can’t be thinking of very much of anything else.

Our Crew

The second day’s ride was great – we rode up out of the fog and looked down on the miles of fog covered ocean.  There was an endurance ride in Ft. Bragg that weekend, and a woman I know from Santa Cruz rode in it so I sent her this photograph, which was taken from our trail:

CTR or Endurance? Sunshine or Fog?

Let’s see. The “obstacles” were the creek crossing and a judged mount and dismount, as usual. The unusual one was that we had to stand as a group, then each horse had to leave the group at a trot, stop at the judge’s command, back up, then trot off and wait for the rest of the horses.  Sunny seemed to do well at all of them, and she was great at the Pulse and Respiration checks, with her pulse usually in the 40’s (it has to be under 60). The second day’s ride was only about 13 miles, so we finished relatively early.

When the vet and horsemanship judge completed their calculations, we reconvened for the two-day rider awards.  Sunny won Best Horse in Novice Lightweight division – which she’s done frequently before.  The big surprise was that Sunny and I won Sweepstakes – the combination of best horse and rider in all the Novice divisions. This is a pretty big deal – we’ve never done it before.  So, to circle back to the beginning of this, I *did* ride like Emma, or at least *more* like Emma.  And she’s coming along on our next ride, too.

wanna ride?

donna