Well, just as I thought all was well with Jade’s health, we are now dealing with yet another issue.  This time, not nearly as serious, however, she will have to have another surgery to correct her problem.  She has what is commonly referred to as DDSP, (dorsal displacement of the soft palate).  She had been presenting with a cough upon the beginning of every exercise period.  In order to diagnose the problem, the surgeon needed to fit her with a dynamic endoscopic probe that would show exactly what is happening in her airway during exercise.  My good pal Donna came with me on two trips to Steinbeck to provide moral support and photo document the procedure.

Jade being fitted with the dynamic endoscopic probe

Turns out, Jade throws her larnyx way back in her throat when breathing hard, which in turn cuts off part of her airway.  The bottom line is, she is not getting all of the oxygen required to maintain the kind of stamina necessary to do more than about 8 miles of trail riding.  I have noticed she tires much too easily, and am happy to know that we now have a cause that can be corrected with surgery.

There are two ways to go about this diagnostic procedure; one is having the horse run in place on a treadmill, or have a rider wearing a heavy backpack of equipment that hooks up directly with the probe in the horses nose.

Jade and Cory hooked up and ready

Since Jade had not been taught to run on a treadmill, we opted for the “rider” type test.  She had not been ridden in two weeks, and with a probe up her nose, I felt sure that we would have a bit of a rodeo.  However, once again, Jade surprised me and behaved like the true gem I know she is.  Both Donna and I were amazed at just how perfectly she did everything I asked.  The vets needed to see her in the roundpen, at a trot, a canter and then a fully checked up trot, for assessing the position of the larynx.

Jade doing her part perfectly

For me, this diagnosis was the best possible outcome, because the other things that they were looking at, like lungs and cell abnornmalities would certainly have been more serious than partial airway blockage.  In fact, there is really no rush in getting the surgery done, as long as I keep in mind that she has limitations as to how many miles we can go.  I hope to get some good (short) trail rides in this week, then will look at the calendar to decide what the best time period is for surgery.  Thankfully, the recovery period is short (3-5 weeks) and the surgery is very common, especially among race horses.  Hum…maybe we should look at a career change when she is recovered.

For now, happy trails and I’ll keep the post updated with surgery and recover details. 

So our fearless blogger Donna has come up with a way to get me on the ball writing to my own blog!   She posed a couple intriguing questions and has asked me to respond here for everyones benefit.  First, I haveto apologize for being off the grid for so long now.  Since getting hurt last fall, its been a roller coaster of events and changes for me, some good, some challenging.   Being part of the Trainers Challenge at Western States Horse Expo, was a blast and a very positive experience.  Stay tuned for news of  a very exciting production coming up where 8 of us trainers will be touring together!

Oh yeah, although our own Cruzer began the expo pretty frightened of all the people around, he was a star by the end.  Talk about mass desensitization!   Our scores were solid and the deficiencies are entirely my errors, not his.  In the freestyle competition, the scores ranged from 19 – 49.  Cruzer and I scored a 39.  Honestly, better than I had thought we’d done.

On to Donna’s questions, quoted here from her email.

<<1. Sunny has gotten really s-l-o-w in the arena and for the first half mile when we’re leaving the barn. I don’t think it’s a fear issue in either case:  I’ve handwalked and ridden her out and back over the half mile about 50 times.  She used feel hard and look worried, now she just moves stiffly and looks bored until we turn around. In the arena, I suspect she’s bored because all we do is trot in figures, trying to work on her frame and fitness. And I do the Marybeth special 1-2 -3 thing – “3” is now three taps with the dressage whip I bought at the Expo.  The taps don’t startle her anymore but they do move her along.  I started wondering, though, if I’m dulling her to the taps and I’ll have to escalate more?  I mentioned it to Julie and she “quoted” you, saying that at the clinic, in the 1-2-3 progression, the 3 had to be unpleasant enough to be memorable, so they wouldn’t want to go there again.  So are my 3 little taps, even if they get a change, a new form of nagging?  Or what I thought you said was apply the least amount of pressure you can to get the result you want – and my taps are the right thing?  What if I need to tap her more and more often?  >>

First off, I agree that fear is not her issue.  I suspect boredom is the primary culprit.  You two have logged alot of miles this year!  Anytime your horse begins to exhibit changes in behavior, you want to consider all aspects-physical, emotional, and intellectual.

You always want to explore any possible physical causes first.  Lameness, sore back, tender soles, saddle fit etc.   I know that Donna would have already looked into a medical reason, so we will move on to emotional.

I think emotional causes are the most frequently overlooked.  We are quick to spot fear or agression, but what about the less obvious horses, those  ’get along’  types that aren’t so demonstrative.  They often get tagged as stubborn or lazy.   Boredom with repetition affects horses just as it affects any of us!  Lord knows Ihate doing circles in the arena!  Although Donna and Sunny cover lots of new ground regularily, perhaps there is still a same ole, same ole element from Sunnys point of view.   Its time to add some variety to her experience.  In looking for ideas, new trails would notapply to Sunny.  She is essentially a professional trail horse, with her endurance and trail trial work.    As an endurance athelete, she needs to be kept fit, so you can’t discontinue her conditioning, but add some different elements such as tricks, or cattle work, dressage movements (NO CIRCLES!) Even explore some different disciplines.  Teach her a good spin or a sliding stop and rollback.  Push a ball around with her nose or have her kick it along.   Anything to provide a sense of purpose and, most importantly, a goal she can recognize and complete quickly.   My first choice is always cow work.  Seems like most every horse gets a kick out of being able to push someone else around!  Specially horses lacking confidence or rank.

Now, having considered her point of view and taken steps to alleviate boredom, the fact remains that she still must do what she’s asked when she’s asked to do it.  So let me reiterate the 4 steps of requesting something from our horses.

For the “go-forward” cue:

Step one:   Lift your body and energy while looking for her to lift up, and give you her attention.

Step two:   Starting from your core, slowly bring your legs together, increasing the strength of your “squeeze” as you work down to your ankles.   This is not a super strength, work out on your thighmaster type of squeeze, just a steady firm closing of your legs.

At this point, your horse should make some indication of forward movement.  As soon as you feel anything, even a rock forward, instantly release your leg pressure while keeping your body in the same up/active position.

Step 3:  If she isn’t offering a response yet, raise your hand (or crop) to the side, as if reaching for something from someone standing next to you.   Instantly release at first sign of any forward motion.

Step 4:  If there is still no response, give one solid smack on her butt with enough emphasis to make her step forward, then immediately release all pressure as before, your seat remaining in an up/active position.  Step 4 must be unpleasant enough to wish to be avoided.  Otherwise you are just nagging.   This is not to say causing pain, and one thwack on the butt by any of us wouldn’t even compare to the mildest  kick by another horse.  The startle factor is what causes the forward movement.  One swat on the butt sensitizes her to the 1 and 2 cues.  Repeated tapping on the butt desensitizes her to all the cues.

Steps 3 and 4 are where Donna lost communication with Sunny.  Sounds like you went from a squeeze to nagging with the crop.  Step 3 is a clear signal as to what is next and step 4 follows through.  Personally, I usually just use my hand unless the horse I’m on is too big to reach his butt.  Then, as it always should be, the crop is simply an extension of my hand.

This series of cues, done accurately, will create a soft and light horse every time.  It is one of my few “please do it my way”  cues I try to impress upon my students.  I believe it is the most honest and fair way of asking for a light response from your horse. 

The equitation camp later this summer will really delve into this and more.

This morning I got a note from a friend asking if Sunny and I could meet her and her six year old Lipizzan gelding at the SCCHA Show Grounds.  It would be his first outing from his highly structured dressage barn and she thought he might need a companion on his debut.  Yikes!  This is a horse who wears shipping boots and that goofy hat-thingie when he *looks* at a trailer, and overload stimulation is when there are two horses in the arena at once.  As readers of this blog may have gathered, the Show Grounds can be a scary place for a horse.

I’m pretty sure we got asked because Sunny has a reputation for being a pretty relaxed cookie in most situations, and, even though I know that Sunny is the way she is mostly because it was baked in the cake, I seem to get a lot of the credit for her Dali Lama-esque poise.   Because of that, I felt free to give my friend a list of things to think about – and I’m posting it here if anyone else is facing a First Outing.

Here’s the context.  My friend asked us to go with her and her gelding, Vincent, to the Showgrounds.  We could either meet them there or go together in her straightload trailer, and Sunny has never been in a straightload. Her plan was stay on the ground with him and just walk him around.

Here’s my response (slightly edited):

Deciding whether to

1. do the trailering with a companion horse or
2. have him ride alone and meet another horse at the destination

is a strategic issue I thought about before I started getting Sunny out and about. I took Sunny just about everywhere alone for quite awhile, just so she could learn that there might be friends (and life) on the other end of the trailer ride, even if she had go alone. Also, I’ve seen lots of horses who won’t load unless there’s another horse in the trailer, and I didn’t want her to get the idea that she could be one of those.

And I think trailering together might be a tactical error since Sunny’s never been in a straight load. It would be bad if *she* pitched a fit about getting in with Vincent watching!  Not that I think she will, but first impressions just never seem to go away with horses, and I’d hate to start Vincent’s traveling career with the image of Sunny being stubborn.

Here are some other things to take into consideration:

1.  Sunny and I should be there when you arrive, so when Vincent steps out of the trailer, he sees a familiar face.

2.  When you get there, I suspect that Vincent will be fired up, at least that’s what happened with Sunny.   One way to address this would be to take a quick tour and go home, thus demonstrating that trailer rides ultimately return him home.

3.  Or you could settle in for the afternoon, demonstrating that anywhere you are is (a) safe and (b) it’s his responsibility to settle down and take care of himself, which is what I did with Sunny.

When I took Sunny, before I got her from the trailer, I set up one of the camping paddocks with hay and water. When I pulled her out, I took her on a circuit of the campground, then returned to the paddock where she could eat and not worry about a barrage of new things.  Then I did it again.  And again.  Etc.  I took a book and a lawn chair and sat with her and read while she ate.  She wasn’t completely calm by the time we left several hours later, but she was well fed, able to cope, and she knew that the paddock was her safe place.

4.  Once you figure out what approach you’re going to take and you’re at the Show Grounds,  be prepared to leave any time.  You should expect him to get a little more nervous while he’s making his first couple of tours of the grounds, but if he continues to get more worried, even after you’ve given him some time, you need to get out of Dodge before he gets really scared, both to spare him the anxiety and to ensure the trailer loading will take place while he’s still capable of concentrating.

And if he’s settled down and hit some zen zone of relaxation, be ready to conclude that it’s not going to get better than that, and leave on a high note.

5.  And on the topic of leaving, make sure that Vincent is as good at trailer loading as you can get him, and that you know what to do if he gets stubborn.  I don’t know about other horses, but Sunny is usually willing to climb into the trailer at our barn, but is frequently really *unwilling* to get in the trailer to come home; somehow she hasn’t made the connection that, if she got somewhere in a trailer, she’s going to have to get home in the trailer, too.

On our first or second outing, I couldn’t get Sunny into the trailer. I used all my skills, and tried all my tricks, and got nowhere. I finally called my friend JoAnne, who worked with us before Sunny was started under saddle, and she came from the beach in her sun dress over her bikini, donned her dressage boots, and loaded Sunny in about 39 seconds.  I will treasure forever the pictures of Jo in her tall boots, lacy dress, and dressage whip.  And I’ll also remember how badly I felt about having to call her – so before Sunny and I went out again, we spent enough time working on loading so Sunny stepped in first and thought about it later.

6.  Have a bunch of things you can do on-line, with or without a round pen. The round pen and arena might be far from where you’re starting, so you need to have a plan on how to keep/get his mind in his body when you’re moving him, as well as what you might do in the arena or round pen.  Try to find obstacles to step over and around, so he has to think about how to move his feet.  I guess most importantly, have some skills on the ground so, particularly the Get-Off-Me! command.

7.  Be prepared for behavior you haven’t seen. For example, Sunny’s first barn was isolated and surrounded by trees, cutting off her sight line. When I took her to the Show Grounds, I realized she’d never seen a mounted horse approaching her from far away.  One would come in the trail gate and she’d be paralyzed until she figured out what was going on.  Also, the traffic on Graham Hill Road includes large trucks and motorcycles, so be prepared for the unexpected.

And that’s my response.  By this point, I know that most of you will be looking for my picture in the dictionary next to “sissy”, “conservative”, “fuddy-duddy”, etc – but so many things in Horseland are unpredictable it seems like it’s smart to anticipate as many things as we can.  And if you don’t ever have to use your contingency plans, all I can say is “Congratulations!”

I’d love to hear additional ideas and/or comments from Mary Beth.

wanna ride?

donna

Jim and Jennifer Conferring over the Map

This is (yet another) long post, but I figured that I’d include as much detail as I could for people who might be interested in doing a trail trial – there are two more coming up in July and August. One of them is at Round Valley, which is the back side of Mt. Diablo, and the other is in Walnut Creek.  Check the Trail Trials website for details.

On Saturday, 26 June, Sunny and I did the 2nd Annual Banana Slug Trail Trial, put on by the Santa Cruz County Horseman’s Association.  We did the inaugural event last year (and blogged about it here ), but that was Sunny’s first time out in a large group of horses, so we mostly just survived. This time I was hoping we could do most of the obstacles in an organized fashion.

For those who don’t know, according to the CSHA Trail Trials (TT) group:

A “TT” consists of a ride with approximately 10-12 judged natural obstacles that appear along a trail of several miles in parks or private property. This is not an arena event!

It’s not timed, and people go out in groups on trails, in this case, in Henry Cowell State Park.  The obstacles, usually ones that you might be expected to meet on a trail ride, are set up on the trail.  As you approach them, you’re given a scenario description and specific instructions as to what to do.  You’re judged not only on your ability to execute the task, but on your how well you support your horse through the obstacle.  There are novice, intermediate and advanced groups, so you don’t have to compete with the Pros from Dover.  Anyhow, I enjoyed it last year, even though we were really nervous, and we were looking forward to doing it this year.

Jim and Jennifer, whom we met by doing the ride with them last year, agreed that we should get the band back together, so Sunny and I were ready to go.  We were assigned a start time 10:30 at the SCCHA Showgrounds.  The first three obstacles were on the Showgrounds, then the route went out on the trails of Henry Cowell State Park.

Sunny and I got there about 9:40, about perfect timing:  enough time to forget where I put everything, then remember where it was, and still get tacked up in time – but not enough time to wander around and get *really* nervous.  So, about 10:20, we located Jim and Jennifer and their horses, Montana and Expression, and moseyed down to the large arena, the site of  the first obstacle.

I think the best way to describe the ride is to just talk about the obstacles and what happene, so here goes.

Imagine our surprise when we were the third group scheduled to hit  Obstacle 1 at 10:30.  I know that the organizers scheduled groups at 15 minute intervals, and that no more than 4 horse/rider teams could leave the Showgrounds in any 5 minute period – so I think that they scheduled 12 riders per 15 minute period and the idea was that the riders would sort out the order in real time.  It was the right thing to do – we ran into several groups of 6 or 7 people riding together, and this method allowed that – but it caused us some initial confusion.

The Object of Sunny's Affection - The Mule, not the Person!

It also doomed Sunny and I: among the mounts waiting to do the obstacle, there was a mule, and Sunny, who is usually not too interested in other horses, was riveted by her. I’ve heard that many horses are frightened by mules, but Sunny wasn’t frightened, she was love struck.  I was on the ground when she saw the mule, and she went into high alert mode, pulling me toward her (the mule was a Molly). When she got close she lowered her head and sort of aimed it for the mule’s shoulder. The mule was tolerant, but clearly not as into it as Sunny was.  I pulled Sunny away, but as soon as I would get distracted, she’d start sort of sidling back to the mule. Sunny just couldn’t take her eyes off the mule.

Anyhow, the mule completed the obstacle stylishly, then while her group was organizing to leave, Jennifer and Jim did the obstacle, which was opening the gate into the arena while mounted. When it was Sunny and my turn, the mule finally left.  Sunny couldn’t stand it, she *had* to watch her go – there was no way I was going to get her to stand along side the gate and move *away* from her new found sister. After a short stretch of battling from the saddle, I got off and took her through the gate in hand.

I think it was the right thing to do for a couple of reasons:  (1) Sunny was really distracted and it was a stupid place to have a battle and (2) I discovered that I did, in fact, have expectations of doing well, and they instantly disappeared since we had totally failed on an obstacle, so we could just ride.

Obstacle 2  was on a really narrow little singletrack at the back of the Showgrounds.  We waited there for over 20 minutes – we couldn’t figure out what was taking so long.  I killed the time talking to the people waiting behind us, who had come all the way from Marin.  One of them had her horse in a rope halter, she said she only used a bit when she was doing “serious jumping”!

The Line at Obstacle 2

When it was finally our turn, the instructions were “There is a 300 foot drop to the left and stinging nettles to the right.  Keep your horse between them and walk to the judge.”   We did pretty well at staying on the trail, I think, which was only the first part of the task.

When we got to the judge, she instructed us to walk forward to the bottom of a little hill, then do a u-turn and go up this little zig zag chute defined by ribbons. It was about 4 feet wide, and about 15 feet long, with one bend in it. We had to walk to the end of the chute, then back out, staying within the ribbons in both directions.  We did pretty well, but we got off track a little when we were backing up – I could tell because we ripped the ribbon out of its pins, which was what was taking so long:  they had to reflag the course after almost every rider!

Obstacle 3 consisted of pens with with llamas and miniature horses in them. That caused Sunny consternation last year, but this year, after Cowgirl Camp and The Gauntlet, it was no problem.

After Obstacle 3, we left the Showgrounds and got onto the trails in Henry Cowell.   Jim’s horse Montana and Jennifer’s mare, Expression, were both in a hurry, so Sunny and I volunteered to bring up the rear.  This had the disadvantage of making Sunny always have to watch her buds leave just before we did the obstacle.

Actually, by the end of the ride, she had (a) seriously buddied up with Montana and Expression and (b) thought the obstacles were A Good Thing, since Expression and Montana consistently left her behind on the trail, but when they stopped to do an obstacle, she could catch up with them. This is not my imagination, I watched it happen:  by the last half mile of the ride, when we were walking at 3.8 mph, very gradually losing ground on the other horses, Sunny’s heart rate got up to 197.  When we got to the last obstacle and she caught up, it went down to 78 almost immediately

Back to the ride.  We left on Emma’s Trail, which is a narrow singletrack that drops down, then switchbacks up a pretty steep hill, complete with a water crossing and handrails that you have to thread through.

Obstacle 4 was right at the top; all the horses were stopped on the singletrack well before the actual obstacle, so you couldn’t see what was being asked. When it was our turn, we were told to ride down the singletrack and the judge would tell us what to do next.  At the end of the singletrack, where the judge was, there was a picnic table with two large coolers on it.  The judge’s instructions were to ride to the table, side over and open the blue cooler, take a fortune cookie from it, read the fortune aloud, close the cooler and ride off.

We marched boldly up to the table, which was a good first step, but Sunny appeared to have lost all notion of lateral movement (and this stayed true throughout the day! Dang!), so in response to my efforts to get her to side to the table, she kept her nose pointed at the cooler and rotated around it – to the left when I put on right leg and to the right when I put on left leg.

I finally got her to pause for long enough to it to make a dive for the lid  (yet another advantage of having a tiny horse), which I opened. We then rotated several more times until I saw my chance, and repeated the maneuver to pick up a cookie, which had no fortune in it.  However, there was a sign on the inside of the cooler lid which said, “If your cookie doesn’t have a fortune in it, say ‘I’m riding the best horse in the world.’”  So that’s what I did.  Then we did our fly-by one more time and I closed the lid.

The judge was very kind; she said that Sunny had the makings of a great competitive horse, that she *never* refused anything I asked,  and that she kept trying to figure out what I was trying to do.

Obstacle 5 was called Yellow Jackets.  You had to park your horse between two cones. When the obstacle assistant yelled “Yellow Jackets!”, you had to put your horse into a trot as quickly as you could, then bring her to a stop between two more cones about 3o yards down the path.  The scoring was based not only on how quickly you got going and stopped, but how easily you accomplished it, that is, using your seat to go and whoa.  We did all right on this one.  I think.

Obstacle 6 was after we hit the top of the hill and were on our way down. It was a “continuous downhill motion” obstacle.  The trail is very sandy and really got hammered by the winter rains, which exposed a zillion roots running across and above the trail. Also, the park has installed 18″ high boards across it to act as mini-retaining walls.  The instructions were to descend to the judge without stopping, then stop at the judge.  The path was about 30 yards long and *ugly* – some of the drops were about 18″ straight down and Sunny’s just not that big, so she had to pick her path carefully to not lose her balance.  We made it, though, although I don’t know how I rated on balance, and I think Sunny may have actually come to a stop a couple of times.  In any case, we didn’t hurt ourselves, so we moved on to Obstacle 7.

Actually, we moved to the waiting area for Obstacle 7, where we caught up with Sunny’s love-mule again.  The one-sided lovefest continued, with Sunny subtly jockeying to be close to her, and she was heartbroken when the mule left.

On this obstacle, you had to step over a log that had fallen during the winter, so it was sort of surrounded by, and buried in branches and duff, then walk your horse to the narrow end of a picnic table, which you had to dismount onto, then lead your horse around to the other end of the table and remount, again from the table.

I believe I mentioned before that Sunny had forgotten how to move laterally? Well, she still forgot.  Also, I never dismount using the stirrup, I always do the emergency dismount (I figure I’ll never remember to do it when I’m scared unless it’s the only thing I do), so as she was sort of drifting by the table in the best position I thought she was going to get to, I tried to step off, but I forgot that I needed a foot in the stirrup, missed the table, and fell on the ground! Sheesh, how embarrassing!  Anyhow, Sunny didn’t seem upset by it, and I *had* managed to get off her, so I got back on the table, led her around it, and remounted.

Oh yeah, and to add insult to injury, before you mount or dismount, go up or down hill, or drag or pull anything, you have to check your cinch to make sure it’s tight.  I didn’t check it before I got off or before I got on.

Obstacle 8 was about distractions, I think.  It was staged on a doubletrack trail.  You had to stop between two cones and wait for the judge to tell you to proceed.  Before she did that, two pedestrians started down the path, from a point just in front of you.  When the judge called you, you had to pass the pedestrians, who were pushing a baby carriage and carrying a fishing pole and beach ball, and come to a stop between two cones, next to the judge.  An assistant asked each of us to give her our maps, then, while she asked us questions about our horses, she waved the map in the air. When she was done with the questions, she passed it back to each of us, with a great flourish. Last year, Sunny would have had a heart attack. This year, no problem!  Hmm. It might have helped that the judge was Wendy Killingsworth, who does body work on Sunny and whom Sunny adores.

It was sort of funny that this was called “The Pedestrian” obstacle:  the Henry Cowell campground was full and the trails were *busy* – we must have run into 50 pedestrians who weren’t part of the trail trial, they were just “civilians” out for a hike. With their dogs, backpacks, strollers, toddlers, etc – so, except for the part with the map, if you had made it this far, this obstacle was definitely a gimme!

Obstacle 9 was The Big One, although I’m not sure the organizers knew how big it was going to be.  It was the river crossing, with complications.  Here they are:  the Henry Cowell campground was full, so there were lots and lots of kids playing in the river, complete with beach balls and frisbees.  Also, their parents figured out early that the horses and riders were going to be fun to watch, so they camped out on the hillside, with beach towels, umbrellas and cameras.   Finally, the horses were using the same “single lane”  access trail that the people were using, so any time a kid wanted to come up from the water or go down to the water, the horses had to wait, so there was literally a 30 minute wait to attack the river.

So. When it was finally our turn, Sunny did a beautiful job of walking the steep little trail down to the water.  She hesitated a little going in, but with low key urging, she continued. The river was about 18″ deep and clear, with a mostly sand bottom.  Because it was so clear, you could see that there was one place where the sand had been washed away from the underlying black rock. I let Sunny pick her own way, so even though I was surprised when she chose to leave the sand and walk on the rock, I rolled with it – but she slipped. She didn’t go down, but she thrashed around and moved *lots* of water. When she finally steadied out, the spectators gave her a round of applause, which was way more scary than losing her footing!  Anyhow, we got across the river, rode around a path outlined by flags and got back through the river uneventfully.

Jim and Jennifer Waiting for Us after the River Crossing

Obstacle 10 was a vet. We had to ride to a point, stop, dismount, loosen the girth and hand walk our horse to the vet for a respiration check, then remount. No problems there; I may have even remembered the girth check before I dismounted.

Obstacle 11 was also more rider-oriented than horse -oriented.  You had to dismount, tie your horse to a tie bar, and clean the left rear hoof.  You had to tie with a guaranteed quick release knot and you had to be carrying a hoof pick, to be successful on this one.  Fortunately, they tell you what knot they want to see in the Appendix to the Trail Trials rules and I had read the rules,  and I always carry a pick in my pack, so we were good.  It was also nice to see a couple of friendly faces:  Scott and Cristie Thomas were working this obstacle and it’s always great to see them.

Cristie, Hard at Work

Obstacle 12 was the only one that I was concerned about getting dumped on.  You had to walk tyour horse to the judge, who handed you a large rain coat, put the rain coat over the front of your saddle, ride around a little path, lift the coat off your saddle and give it to the judge.  Sunny was perfect. Again, last year she would have had a heart attack.  Whoo hoo!

Obstacle 13, the final one, was pretty funny.  We were riding down a nice singletrack, and there was a clipboard hanging in the middle of the trail, about shoulder high on me. The task was to grab the clipboard, take the pen that was clipped to it, write your name, then put the pen back, let the clipboard go and ride on. Montana refused it, with drama, so I was a little concerned about Sunny.  When it was her turn, Sunny marched up to the clipboard and started banging it with her nose. Finally, she managed to whack it in my direction, so I grabbed it as it flew by and followed the instructions.  No worries, and we bopped along back to the Showgrounds.

The ride was about 8 miles by my gps and it took about 5 hours and 45 minutes – there was a *lot* of waiting.  Some people were really put off by the lines, but I think it’s an important part of the discipline – I know that patience is a truly desirable quality in a horse and I really appreciate the chance to practice it in the company of other people who have an investment in keeping things calm.   All the volunteers were pleasant and efficient, and the judges were kind and calm.  And the trails at Cowell are beautiful (although Wilder rules!) and well worth seeing.  So, we had another great adventure.

wanna ride?

donna

Jade and Cory on the Salinas River Beach

I wanted to share my latest breakthrough with Jade, the horse that I almost gave up on earlier this year. After much deliberation, I came to the conclusion that I needed to try a little harder to help Jade with her fears and bad behavior on trail rides.

My first course of action was to use a trainer to work with her at the beach (crashing waves and all), because it is a place where she has shown extreme anxiety in the past. By the end of the training session, Jade was trotting through the water as the waves moved in and out, something I thought I would never witness. In the process, she needed a lot of support from the trainer, but trusted her as she got right in the water with Jade.

After the session, another of my dreams came true…I rode Jade bareback on the beach.  She had the most beautiful, smooth trot in the sand and it was everything I hoped for.  We have been back for at least 3 more rides on the beach and all of them calm and uneventful.  Wow!  This helped me with the decision to go the next step.

My next plan was to take her up to the Trinity Mountains, where I have my horse property, with no other horses there to support her…only me. The idea I had was that if she had only me to rely on, it might build her trust in me while out on the trail.

When we arrived, (after a 9 hour haul), she was anxious to get into her corral and have a big drink of water. She would not eat the hay I put out, as she was not yet comfortable enough to put her head down to eat. I set up a chair next to her stall and sat there until she finished most of her hay. Over the course of the next 8 days, I sat in that chair a lot to remind her that I was there for her and she was not alone. When I would get up to walk back to the house, she would whinny at me…just like I was her horse pal leaving the barn. I felt my plan was working just like I wanted it to.

Jade Chowing Down in the Pasture

Once Jade began to feel at home, she gladly went out into her corral and grazed for hours in belly deep grass.  My incredible husband, along with some local labor, were able to complete our ~4 acre pasture fence, so half way into our trip, Jade had an entire pasture to herself.  She appeared by all accounts to be a “happy camper”.

Jade Owning the Whole Pasture

We rode every day out of the 8 days we were there and had not one single bad incident. We rode solo, we rode with my husband on his bicycle and we rode with a hiker, with no problems.

We even found ourselves useful when two young adults (a brother and sister) tragically drowned up river from our swimming hole. The bodies were lodged under a large boulder with no way to recover them. The recovery team was hoping that after a few days, they would become more boyant and begin to float downstream. Jade and I (with binoculars and camera) headed up the river canyon trail as far as we could safely go, watching the river along the way. Some deer in the trail gave Jade a start, but she hardly reacted compared to previous similar encounters. The day before that some hikers had run into a rattlesnake on the trail, so we were keeping our eyes out for snakes as well. As much as we tried, we were unsuccessful in having any sightings of, or helping with the recovery of the drowning victims, and by the time we headed back to Santa Cruz, the two bodies still had not been recovered. A sadness sort of fell over our little valley of 200 residents because, of course, everyone knew the folks that died.

On a lighter note though, one of the best rides Jade and I had was when we rode through town out to the levee along side the little airstrip. I was thinking as we rode,  “I wonder how Jade would do if a plane landed while we were right here”. Lo and behold, while we were along the airstrip, a plane flew low and fast over the the strip. About 1 minute later that plane came in from the other direction for a landing.  Jade merely glanced at the incoming plane and never missed a step. She was completely unfazed by it. Wow…I think she grew up overnight!

On our way back towards the barn, we took a detour. I wanted to go down to the river and practice river crossings. However, when we got there, the river was running much more swiftly and deeply than usual for this time of year. Not wanting to put us in harm’s way, we decided to go in only knee deep and have a drink, then come back out. I am confident that if conditions were right, Jade would not have any problem crossing the river.

We headed up the trail from the river, and on our way home, discovered the Farmer’s Market in progress in front of the post office. Jade had several admirers there and they were all vying to hold her for me while I purchased a loaf of homemade walnut bread. After that, the two of us headed off, not into the sunset, but pretty darn close. We went back home with bread in arm, and both feeling quite proud of what we had accomplished together.

I am now at the point that I believe Jade is fast becoming the solid trail horse that I wished for long ago. I am so pleased that I realized, before it was too late, that taking more time and commiting to sometimes uncomfortable training situations can help make a horse your ideal partner.

Henry Coe State Park is the second largest state park in California and the largest one in Nor Cal:  87,000 acres and over 300 miles of trails.  I used to ride it on my mountain bike when I was *really* fit, and I’ve been itching to get back to it on Sunny, when *she’s* really fit.  It’s rough, hilly terrain and can be ungodly hot – but also tremendously beautiful.   There’s no place for wildflowers like Coe, and from the ridge tops you can see forever – a biking friend and I saw the snow-covered Sierras one January.

The problem with riding in Henry Coe is that you have to find a like-minded companion; I suspect friendships could be lost by enticing an innocent friend to bring their horse and explore.  Fortunately, on our NATRC ride, we met people who share our (okay, my) goals, and Michelle, who sheparded Sunny and I through the NATRC ride, agreed to ride with us from the Hunting Hollow entrance to Henry Coe.

Sunny and I trailered over from Santa Cruz, and Michelle from the Valley.  I thought we’d meet half way, but it took me a little over an hour and it took Michelle two hours.  Sorry, Michelle!

Because of that miscalculation, Sunny and I had about an hour in the parking lot, which turned out to be just fine.  It’s a huge lot, lined on one side by large trees, so I was able to park so that the truck and trailer were in the shade, and there was no worry about getting out or turning around.   There is a kiosk there with maps of the area and coming events, including horse-oriented ones.  And right out the gate, there’s a creek/river that Sunny could drink from and we could practice crossing.

Also, Hunting Hollow seems to be a major mountain biking jump off point (we used to go from Gilroy Hot Springs), so there were bikes and people all over, including one couple erecting a huge umbrella-like sun tent on the back of their truck.  Sunny and I, of course, went over to help them with the flapping nylon.  For once, though, it was fair:  the woman was scared stiff of horses, and by the end she was feeding Sunny. And Sunny was scared stiff of big tents waving in the breeze and she was okay with them by the end.  There were also several families with kids who *needed* to pet a horse, so Sunny stepped up to that, too.

Michelle and her gelding, Fadder (I think), arrived, and got tacked up and ready to go in about 2 minutes.  Michelle had ridden an endurance ride at Henry Coe, so I thought she knew some of the trails.  I had told her that I had

Topo Map of our Route

ridden my mountain bike in Coe, so she thought I knew the trails.  It turned out that the endurance ride hadn’t come to the south part of the park, where we were, and I had only gotten that far south a couple of times, and from a different starting point, so we were both clueless about route. We were forced to consult the map.  We actually did a pretty good job, I think. The thumbnail on the left is a link to a topo map of our ride – just click on it to see more detail. You can probably tell, just from the density of the elevation lines how steep *everything* is.  If you want to follow along, here is a link to the trail map we were using:  http://www.coepark.org/maps/gilroy_entrances/HH_handout.pdf

We left the parking lot and crossed the creek, and immediately hit Hunting Hollow Road.  It stayed flat for about three-quarters of a mile and we crossed the creek 4 times, I think. Then we headed up on the Lyman Willson Trail.  Here is a profile map of the entire ride:

Elevation Profile of the Willson Camp Loop

As you can see, when we headed up, we headed UP.  I think we climbed about 1300′ in about 1.5 miles.  The Lyman Willson Trail  is single track, with good footing and quite a bit of shade – but it’s heinously steep.  Sunny’s saddle slipped back, in spite of her breast collar, so I got off, adjusted the saddle and walked her through a few places, but mostly she hauled my big bottom up that hill until we turned along the ridge top.  Whoo Hoo.  Oh yeah, not too far before the top, we ran into the ONLY person we saw – a lone hiker.

Even when we got to the “top”, it wasn’t flat – the trail followed the ridge top, with its ups and downs.  Fortunately, about a quarter mile from where we turned, there was a stock tank with water in it and the horses got a chance to take a break and take a drink.  That settled me down a little, too, and I was able to see where we had gotten to.  We were on the south side of the ridge, and high enough over the “local” hills and see Gilroy, and the coastal range, with a huge fog bank blowing over it.  Also, there were still clumps of wildflowers blooming:  California poppies, of course, but some beautiful, small white flowers and some blue/purple ones.  I remembered how much I enjoyed just touring in this park.

Soon after that, we got to Willson Camp, where there are a couple of buildings and another stock tank.    At Willson Camp, we headed down hill – the only other option would have taken us too far to feel comfortable, not knowing what the descent was going to be like.

We took the largest path down, Wagon Road, which was good because we felt like we had to walk Fadder and Sunny down several parts of it – and the single track alternatives had signs like “Trail Not Maintained” on them, which made us think they might have had footing challenges, as well as just being danged steep.

We followed Wagon Trail all the way to its end, and almost all the way to the park boundary, then intersected with Hunting Hollow Road and headed for the parking lot.  Hunting Hollow Road was the road we started on, with all the creek crossings, and it kept up – I bet we had to make 5 more crossings.  Sunny didn’t get noticeably less concerned about crossing the creek, but she got really fond of getting knee deep in the water and just stopping.  As I mentioned before, the temperature was tolerable, but only because (a) the wind was blowing and (b) I was riding a horse instead of powering myself up those dang hills.  I suspect it was, subjectively, a much hotter day for the horses.

We made it back in time to make it home in daylight – a perfectly executed ride.  It was about 10.5 miles, about 2200′ of climbing, and it took us about 4 hours and 20 minutes, end to end. Oh yeah, as some of you know, I’m geographically challenged, but between the map and the trail markers, I always felt like I knew exactly where I was.  I was concerned about the terrain, but I was confident we could find our way back to the trailer.  Good job.

It was a great ride in beautiful scenery and I enjoyed every minute of it, except the times when I thought Sunny was going to keel over.  You know, I think of Sunny as being in pretty good shape, but she was d-e-d, dead, at the end of the ride and for two days afterward.  BUT, there was an *endurance race* there the previous day and they were doing *50* miles.  The very thought . . .

wanna ride?

donna

View from the Wilder Ridge Overlook

Okay, she’s not really a sergeant, but she *is* a member of the Wilder Ranch State Park Horse Patrol.  (Does anyone besides me remember “Sgt Preston, RCMP”?  I thought it had the same ring to it.  Anyhow.)

“Horse Patrol” is a volunteer organization that has branches at several California state parks; in our general area, there are Horse Patrols at Wilder Ranch, Henry Cowell, and Henry Coe State Parks.  The Regional Parks, like Ft. Ord, have a similar organization: BETA (Bicycle Equestrian Trail Association).

The role of the Horse Patrol is to “. . . participate in safety patrols that augment regular state park ranger patrols . . . “  What this means in real life is that we ride the trails, checking on the state of the park:  answering questions, noting trail damage, logging sightings of mega-fauna such as bobcats and deer, and being available to the rangers via radio, to go to a specific site, if necessary, and check things out.  We have to patrol in groups of at least two, and, since the idea is to be accessible and visible, we just walk.

Georgia and PJ

To get on with the story, PJ, a friend who also has a young horse and is also a docent at Wilder Ranch, mentioned that she had just gotten certified for Horse Patrol, so I looked into it, too.  It sounded like just the thing for Sunny:  getting exposed to lots of different things and people, and doing it calmly, so I sent off a note to Georgia, the Person in Charge at Wilder Ranch, to get started.

To get certified, you have to go on four check-out rides with Georgia.   You have to (a) complete all the rides safely (Georgia tells tales of potential volunteers who didn’t!) and (b) your horse has to meet certain behavior criteria.  Georgia sent me a copy of the standards before we went out.  It included such things as stands quietly when being tacked up and mounted, deals calmly with other horses, is a good ambassador to park visitors, pace can be rated, etc.  I sent a note back to her saying that Sunny could do most of the things most of the time but none of the things all of the time. Georgia said that was probably normal for a horse, so we set up our first check-out ride.

Our first ride pretty much set the pattern for the rides to follow.   The Patrol usually consisted of PJ and her gelding Wiley, Georgia and her mare Scarlett, and Sunny and me.  When on patrol, we park our trailers in the visitor’s lot at the Wilder Ranch State Park complex – a paved parking lot where all the visitors park.  That’s the first hurdle. Sunny was, and is, to this very day, wary of that lot.  First, since it’s paved, it’s slippery. Second, you never know what or who’s going to get out of a car – there are frequently groups of 20 or more people, lots of cyclists, and a zillion kids, many of whom have never seen a horse, except on TV.

The Parking Lot - All Patrols Start Here

After everyone gets ready, you walk down the road to the Wilder Ranch Ranch Complex.   As some of the docents say, “We’re no Williamsburg, but we’re on our way.”  The Ranch Complex consists of the following buildings:

• A home built in the 1870s(?)
• A Victorian home built in 1897/8
• A dairy barn built in the late 1800’s
• A blacksmith shop and machine shop, all run by water power
• A granary
• A chicken coop with about 40 chickens
• A barn with 5 goats and a some sheep in outdoor paddocks
• A adobe building, probably from the mid-1800’s
• A rodeo arena from the 1920’s which currently contains draft horses

And the volunteers are all in period dress, which features long dresses for the women and hats for both men and women (when I am acting as a docent, I wear coveralls – my persona is as a dairy worker).

Anyhow, when there are volunteers available, all the buildings are open – and there are blacksmiths whacking on things at the forge, people in the machine shop using the water-powered, belt-driven tools,  and people in the houses, cooking on the wood stoves, making quilts, carding wool, etc.  And that’s just what the volunteers are doing; the park visitors are watching the activities or eating the just-baked cookies, or participating in making corn meal or learning how to milk a cow,  or just scampering on to the next thing.  In other words, from a horse’s point of view, anything could happen at any time.

If you happen to be a horse walking through this, in addition to the things mentioned above, parents and children will run up to you and want to pet you. Frequently, the parents will want to lift their kids up in their arms so they can touch the horse’s face or mane.  Sheesh!  It’s good, but scary.  One of the requirements to pass the certification is that you can ride through the Ranch Complex.  I did it twice, to prove that Sunny was capable, and since then I’ve hand-walked her.  I think it’s safer and it makes us more approachable. Also, you have to walk your bike through the complex, so it seems only fair that we’d walk our horses, too.

Coming through the Hwy 1 Underpass. Note the tunnel mouth in the background and the family off to the right

So, you mount up in the parking lot and ride down to the Ranch Complex, and right through the middle of it.  Then you go through a tunnel *under* Highway 1, and out past the arena with the draft horses in it.  Whew!  At that point, you’re finally at the trail head, and according to Sunny, things are easy after that.

View from the Wilder Ridge Overlook

There isn’t a set route that we have to patrol, it’s purely “dealer’s choice”.  Our rides with Georgia always featured a stop at the Wilder Ridge Trail Overlook – you can see why.  As we ride, we keep track of any deer, bobcats, coyotes, wild boar, etc that we see.  And the horses usually see these things first.  I’ve learned to pay attention when Sunny’s head goes up – her nose is frequently pointing as something “countable”.  We also count the hikers and bikers we pass.  When the budgets are drawn up for each state park,  weight is given for park usage and how much habitat it protects, so our documentation serves a purpose.

Dealing with Bikes

On the training rides, Sunny had to lead, follow, and be in the middle.  The only issue for Sunny was hikers with backpacks – they looked darned scary.  Oh yeah, and bikers trying to look invisible  by getting off their bikes and squatting down behind them.  It’s sort of funny: the people who are trying hardest to do the right thing are frequently the scariest to the horses because they try to be *really* quiet – so, Sunny at least, thinks they’re laying in wait for her and there’s no way she’s getting close enough for that!  When this happens, we start waving and yelling “Hello there!”, hoping to get some response from them that will allow the horses to figure out what they are.

Also, we had to show that we could negotiate normal trail obstacles.  Like logs across them.

Checking the Singletrack

The other necessary skill is getting off the trail for hikers and bikers and baby strollers to pass.  Sunny hasn’t had a problem with this so far, but I’m not sure if she’s going to be as imperturbable after all the trailside grass is dried up.

After you’ve done your trail ride, you have to return to the trailer via the same route, that is, through the complex – but it’s way easier after the horses have been out for a couple of hours.

We got certified about a month ago. The only problems Sunny had during the process were due to her pull-backs. Her first blivet was when I hooked her to the bike rack while I went to the bathroom. Fortunately, I just wrapped my reins around the rack, I didn’t tie. Anyhow, according to PJ and Georgia, she did great until I flung open the door, whereupon she pulled back dramatically.  Of course, she stopped nearly instantly when she was free, but it was scary.  Also, it’s had a lasting effect:  many of the bathrooms at local parks (Ft Ord, Sunol) are built on the same pattern – and now Sunny gives them a *very* wide berth.

And on her last check out ride, I had her attached to the trailer on a Blocker tie. As I set the buckle on her girth, she went straight up. When she came down, she went back and slipped on the asphalt and fell. I grabbed her line as she went by, she did two bucking revolutions around me and stopped.  I pulled the saddle and pad, checked for burrs, etc., didn’t find any, put everything back on, and rode out. No problems.  I think Georgia passed us because we were able to recover.

Since then, we’ve done three patrols, I think, all of them uneventful. And, yes, I *do* wear the uniform that you see Georgia and PJ wearing – as a child of the sixties, I’m a little uncomfortable with it, but there it is.  There are some male patrollers, but most of the Patrol are like me:  middle aged to late middle-aged women.  My personal opinion is that we keep things quiet by spreading grandmotherly zen around from horseback.  On the other hand, at Henry Cowell, horse patrols were stepped up last year because there were a couple of incidents of theft – so we *are* called out to meet specific needs.

Anyhow, it’s a great privilege to be able to ride in one of the most gorgeous places in the world *and* be able to feel like you’re doing some good.  If you have some time, investigate joining the horse patrol.

wanna ride?

View from Top of the World

Last Fall I observed a couple of NATRC rides and decided that they would be a great way for Sunny and I to start our large group riding career – everyone there has a stake in keeping their horses calm and well-behaved, so I figured I’d have a better chance of  keeping Sunny calm and well-behaved.

Apologies in advance: my memories of the pre-ride activities are *much* clearer than those of the actual ride!  And this is a LONG post, so be prepared.

**************Skip this part if you know about NATRC****************

To get everyone on the same page, NATRC stands for North American Trail Ride Conference, and, after listening for 2 days, I understand that it is pronounced “Nay-Track”.   Here is what I think I know about NATRC rides.

NATRC puts on competitive trail rides, where horses are judged on conditioning and manners, and riders are judged on their skill in riding, managing and caring for their horses.   The judging starts as soon as you check in and includes the set up of your camp.   The rides are designed to be ridden in a specified amount of time.  You are penalized for each extra minute up to 30 minutes late, then you’re disqualified.  Same deal only backwards if you’re too fast.

There are three classes of competition:  novice, open, and . . . something else.  Novice is for beginner horse and rider teams, the others are for more experienced teams.  Thus, novice class does less distance than the other classes, and at a lower speed. The default pace for novices seems to be 3.5 mph and 5.o mph for the other classes. This speed can be adjusted for terrain, so if the ride terrain is unusually difficult, the speed can be lowered.

In each class, there are lightweight and heavyweight divisions.  “Lightweight” is defined to mean that the rider plus tack weighs over 190 pounds. Heavyweights exceed 190 pounds.

Before you start, there’s a vet check, where the horses get a once-over: pulse, respiration, gut sounds, back soreness, legs, hydration, etc, as well as a trot out and lunges in both directions, to ensure that they are fit to start with respect to soundness, attitude, etc.  In addition, the horsemanship judge makes sure that they are clean and well taken care of and that the handler knows how to manage them in the group.

On the trail, there are several Pulse and Respiration checks (P&Rs) as well as observed obstacles, where the judges ask all horse and rider teams to negotiate a specific obstacle and assess their performance.  Also while on the trail, teams are judged for things such as one horse crowding another – in other words, manners count!  At the end of the ride, the pre-ride vet/horsemanship check is repeated.  As you can see, to be successful, you have to have invested the time to have a well-conditioned and sensible horse, hence my interest and confidence that we’d have a good chance of being safe from lunatic horses and riders for our debut.

Finally, each time the team is vetted or judged on some horsemanship issue, the judges fill out a little form with comments, which you get at the end of the ride, so you know why they gave you the score that they did.

*******************Back to the ride story***************************

All in all, it looked intimidating and challenging, and something that would be good for Sunny and me both. So I signed up for the first ever Arnold Rim Trail NATRC ride.  It was held in the National Forest just outside Avery, California – at about 3500 feet of elevation, I’d guess, on Saturday, 22 May.  The novice course was 21 miles.  That’s longer than Sunny had ever done at one stretch before, but we’ve done a lot of miles and a lot of back-to-back rides, so I figured we could do this.

The only little thing is that you have to have your horse “securely” attached to your trailer:  portable corrals won’t do.  And Sunny has developed a pull back problem over the past year, so this requirement worried me a lot, but it also motivated me to do something about it. So I went to Marybeth, as I usually do.  This tale was told in a preceding blog (Sunny & Pull Backs) and end of the story was that Sunny successfully spent one night tied to a trailer before we went to the ride.  So I figured there was a chance we’d survive, but I was still very concerned.

The first hint that this was going to be even more than we had bargained for was the drive in.  Google Directions were great until we left the paved road. Then the going got rough – the road had gotten a work out over the really wet and snowy winter, and there was a set of ruts literally 9 inches deep running down the road. They looked like they had been created by a big truck of some kind because they were set at about the width of *my* truck wheels.  I was really concerned about getting stuck because the truck is sort of operating at its limits with the camper and the horse trailer both.  The task was complicated by the huge puddles that occasionally covered the road. The last 1.5 miles took me almost 45 minutes – I had the truck in 4wd all the way.  Sheesh.

When I got there, I got some directions as to where to park, unloaded Sunny and went to check-in. I must have telegraphed my nerves: Chris, the Ride Secretary, sent her daughter back to camp with me to show me around and tell me what came next.  Thanks, Chris!

As soon as I checked in, I had to wear a bib with my number (61) on it any time I was out of the camper, so the judges could identify me, in case I did something really goofy. Also, Chris gave me little ribbons with the number on it to put on Sunny’s bridle and halter, in case she got away.  There was also a tag for my trailer, so the judges could judge my camp set up.

Anyhow, it had gotten really cold as we climbed up to Avery, so I had a heck of a time getting my bib over all my clothes, but I finally did and Sunny and I went for a couple of laps around camp. After that we went over to vet in.

The horsemanship judge checked her first by feeling her coat and mane to see dirt, checking hoofs, etc.  Then the vet did her exam, while the horsemanship judge watched to see if I was handling Sunny in a way to keep her in control and the vet safe.  Sunny stood nicely for the check, then we had to trot out a ways, stop, make two trotting revolutions in either direction, then come back. Sunny was totally confused by lunging on a line shorter than 22′ so we didn’t cut a good figure, but we were certified as fit to start.

(Which was a relief:  from what I heard later, 30 people brought their horses to the ride, only 23 made it through this initial check.)

The next step was to go to the Ride Meeting – which required that I tie Sunny to the trailer and leave her. I tied her to my trusty inner tube, took a deep breath, pulled up my socks, and marched off to the meeting with my info packet.

Ride Map for Arnold Rim Trail Ride

There were two interesting things about the meeting. The first was the discussion of the map – you can see it above, with my annotations.  The top outline is the morning route, the bottom one is the afternoon route.  I *get* that a map is a symbolic representation of the terrain, but this was at least one level of abstraction up from a map:  as you can see, there were no points of reference, no trail names, no lat/longs, no nothing.

As those of you who have traveled with me can attest, I was going to get lost for sure and I was terrified. No one else seemed to be panicking, so I guess that you learn to read these route sheets, just as you do a map. And in addition to the sheet, the route is marked on the trail by ribbons and pie plates.

The second item of interest was the weather.  First, it rained.  Then it hailed.  Then it rained.  And the wind blew throughout. And Sunny was tied to the trailer.  And it was COLD.  I was wearing two sweaters, wool socks,  and a Carhartt heavy jacket and I was cold. Fortunately, I’d brought Sunny’s heavy blanket, so she was okay. Anyhow, I got back to the trailer and Sunny was eating her alfalfa, so I went to bed in the camper. As the rain rattled on the camper roof, I thanked the guys at Scotts Valley RV for fixing my roof and the lights. It was bad enough to be cold, but to be wet, cold, and in the dark would have been too much.

Did I mention that it was cold?  I didn’t want to turn on the heater in the camper because I’d never done it before and trying it in the dark and rain for the first time didn’t seem smart.  So, I went to bed with my clothes on under two sleeping bags and a throw blanket.

Ride management honked a horn at 5:30 AM, so I got up, made myself some coffee and started hand walking Sunny around again until she seemed somewhat comfortable, then I cleaned her, tacked her up and went down to the starting point in time for the 7 AM start.  It was clear, for which I was grateful, but cold – I wore a sweater as my first layer, another sweater as my second layer, then my vest and my bib.  I felt like the Pillsbury Dough Girl, but I was able to get on Sunny, so I figured it wasn’t excessive.

Riders start at 30 second intervals, but after the start, usually group up. I *really* needed to group up since I was certain I would get lost alone.  Since I didn’t know anyone, my plan was to hang out at the start and look pathetic.  I got a couple of nibbles, but they didn’t work out because I admitted that Sunny was a slow walker – these people had Missouri Foxtrotters, which are gaited horses with really fast walks, so we decided that we wouldn’t fit it. Finally, we were running out of people so I just took off. There were two kids (not children, but kids to me!) Daniel and Cacia, right behind us, so we all sort of rode off together.

Daniel and Cacia

I’ll get it out of the way early:  if it hadn’t been for Michelle (who’ll be introduced later), Daniel and Cacia, I would be wandering in the Sierras, even now. I was completely lost within a mile of camp.  As I mentioned, the trail was marked with ribbons and pie plates, but I seemed unable to either see them or interpret them. I certainly owe finishing the ride to my companions, so, if you read this, thanks!

Our first observed obstacle was about a quarter mile from the start. You had to trot across a little clearing to the judges, then follow their instructions. I think the idea was that the horses would be pretty amped this early in the ride, so this would be a test of the rider’s management skills. We trotted over to the judge, who told us to stop, then back 2 steps.  Sunny stopped and backed the two steps, but swerved her behind to the right, to see the jeep driving by on the forest road. Dang!

When we left that point, Sunny and I were following a man and a woman riding together.   I was really working to keep them in sight because I figured that if I had Daniel and Cacia in back of me, and these two in front of me, I had a good chance of (a) not getting lost initially and (b) getting found if I did get lost.  Anyhow, in about a 15 minutes, the couple separated and the woman slowed down enough for me to catch her. This was Michelle, whom I’d be with for the rest of the ride. Thank you, God.  Thank you, Michelle.

Anyhow, somewhere in here Daniel and Cacia caught up with us. Or maybe we caught up with them – anyhow, we started riding together.

I should mention that, on the infamous map, there was a grid of points on the map and the elapsed time it should take you to get there.  So you’d be riding along and there’d be a paper plate attached to a tree with “P3″ written on it.  You’d refer to the grid on your map, which would tell you that you should be at P3 at 2 hours and 35 minutes into the ride.   At the start you’re supposed to set your watch or timer to noon (zero), so your have something to match to the time.  I thought I’d done that, but I didn’t realize how tight the times were going to be:  I hit the start button when I got on Sunny, about 5 minutes before I actually started. Michelle had hit the button on time, so she had a clear notion of how we stood.

At the first point, we were already several minutes later than the optimum time, so we had to figure out how to speed our little group up.  I volunteered to have Sunny take a crack at leading, and she really stepped up.  I was wearing my GPS thingie because I wanted to see how her heart rate trended through the ride, but it also gave speed. She was walking between 3.2 and 3.8 mph  – which is darned good considering that she wasn’t getting to 2 mph early last summer.  Anyhow, she seemed to set a pretty good pace, so we stayed in front.

Oh yeah, just after we got in front, there were two big boulders across the road. All the horses did the “snort and swoop” when then saw them and it took Sunny probably a minute to get across them and the other horses took their time, even after Sunny was over. These boulders were the ONLY thing that all four horses were leery of in all the time we rode together.

Sunny led through overhanging branches and eroded trails. I think we crossed creeks three times in the morning and twice in the afternoon. They weren’t the Mighty Mississippi, but they weren’t puddles either, and she did great. She’d stop, sniff and go. I was so proud of her.

At the first P&R (pulse and respiration) check, she got 8/2 – they measure each item for 15 seconds, so that means a heart rate of 32 beats per minute and a respiration rate of 8 breathes a minute.  The people at the stop seemed impressed and a couple of them asked where she came from.

Daniel and Cacia Climbing to Top of the World

Right after the P&R, we climbed to Top of the World.  It was steep and rocky, but beautiful at the top.  And by far NOT the steepest climb in the ride.

Another view from Top of the World

In the photo, you can see the clouds coming in.  It was cold when we started, but clear.  On the trail, it stayed cold because the first part of the ride was down in the trees, and then, when we emerged, the clouds were rolling in and consolidating. Finally, there were large, wet globules falling from the sky.  I’m not sure whether it was technically snow or sleet, but it was wet and cold and I hadn’t anticipated it on this ride.

The trails were mostly singletrack with some small sized fire roads thrown in.  I was comfortable walking, Sunny seemed comfortable, and, according to my gps unit, we were marching along close to right pace.  But by the time we got to lunch, according to Michelle’s time keeping we were 30 minutes over time – disqualification territory.  I was not too concerned – Sunny was acting like Miss Manners and she’d successfully spent the night at the trailer, so my goals had been met.  However, Michelle kept saying, “Your horse is doing beautifully. It would be a shame for her not to place because we missed the time by a minute or two.”  I thought that was pretty compelling, so we agreed to really step up the pace after lunch.  We thought we could do it because we had essentially half the ride left to do – we’d done 11 miles in the morning, so there were 10 left  in the afternoon.

You have to take 45 minutes for lunch and I thought it would drag, but it was the shortest 45 minutes on record.  It seems like I pulled Sunny’s tack, got a handful of chips and put on yet another jacket, then realized I had to get her tacked up and back to the Start point in 10 minutes. Sheesh!  We made it, but just barely. Just as we came out of lunch, there was another judged obstacle. This one was a series of 3′ high berms, all in a row. The idea was to see if you could keep your horse controlled through the quick up and down, and if you could keep your weight in the right places to help your horse stay in balance. I felt like we did okay on that.

Anyhow, we stuck to our commitment – we trotted everything that was flat or slightly uphill and had good footing. The footing became a consistent issue on the last half of the ride – there were lots of times the trail had either huge boulders in it that the horses would slip on, or babyhead boulders that would roll around under foot.

Oh yeah, the last segment before the P & R, we had to ride out to a point, then backtrack back. There was a big tree across the trail and it had fallen so that at the end where it was low so the horses could step over it, there were several large branches to step across.  Sunny looked at it, then tried to step across it, but didn”t make it – she stuck her foot between two branches.  When she tried to step out, it caught her leg and pulled her back.  I wasn’t expecting it, so when she stopped, I almost went over her head -  I wrapped my arms around her neck and saved myself.  Sunny stood stock still until I sat up. Then she very deliberately pulled her leg straight up and out and walked on. What a gal.

Slight diversion.  In the last half there is a point where there are three ultra steep pitches right in a row – much steeper than the climb to Top of the World. The longest is probably only 50 yards, but, to my mountain biker’s eye, they look like they are at least 30% grades, and they are erosion paths, so the surface is loose – I wouldn’t dream of trying them on my bike, either uphill or downhill.  When we were at the bottom, we noticed a woman tailing up the hill (”tailing” is when the rider walks and holds onto the horse’s tail, so the horse pulls the rider up the hill, but doesn’t have to carry the rider’s weight.)  I asked Michelle if that was legal because if it was, I wanted to do it, too.  The woman answered instead – when her horse was trying to get up the hill, he broke into a canter, missed his footing on the trail, she fell, and as she fell, the saddle rolled under the horse’s belly!  Somewhere in the wreck, her stirrup was broken, so she couldn’t continue the ride, and she was hand-walking him in.  Sheesh again.

When we left camp after lunch, we were last. By the P&R on the back half we were ahead of 4 other people.  At the P&R, we had to do a judged mount. Sunny was practically perfect.

I’m not sure where it fell in the ride, but there was another judged obstacle – we had to walk our horses through a big puddle. Sunny had been forging across rivers all stinking day – do you think she’d walk through that puddle?  No way!  The first effort, she got her toes wet, but danced around to the side. I walked her back through the middle of the puddle and she did very well, so I turned her around to head out and she jumped it!  First time ever.

Anyway, after the P & R, we continued our pace until I noticed that Sunny was starting to slip in the rear – we’d be walking and she would lose her footing in the rear.  That used to happen a lot when I first started riding her, and it happens now when she gets tired, so I told Michelle that I thought Sunny and I weren’t going to be able to stick with our trotting program.  Michelle took a look around around and said, “The footing’s not good enough to trot here anyway.  We’ll walk too.”

I think we came to that decision about 3.5 miles from the end of the ride. They were among the longest miles of my life and I’m positive they were THE longest of Sunny’s!  She slowed down so much that Michelle had to lead.  The good news and bad news about Sunny is that she really doesn’t seem to care what other horses are doing on the trail. It makes her easy to handle when other horses are misbehaving, but it also means that another horse walking away from her doesn’t count as motivation.  Fortunately, Michelle is patient and the trails really didn’t support speed. The footing was bad and it was all uphill back to camp.

We finally made it back to camp and checked in. After that, we had to clean up our horses and get our final vet check.  I cleaned Sunny as much as I could while she ate.  We went back to the vet, who looked her over and said, “I’d ride this horse, and I don’t say that about many horses!”  Boy, was I thrilled – I think every one thinks their pony is a genius, but it’s really nice to know that someone knowledgeable thinks highly of her, too.  Sunny did well on the check, but I blew the trot out by running into a pile of pine needles on the way back.  Note to self:  look where you’re going, stupid!

When we were done, I tied Sunny to the trailer again – all she wanted to do was stand still and eat – and went off to watch the rest of the horses vet in. There weren’t very many:  only 23 teams started and (I think) only 17 finished within the time limit.

About 30 minutes after the last horse vetted,  the awards ceremony began.  And here is the punchline of this whole story:  Sunny won best horse in the Novice Lightweight division and I won the Horsemanship award in our division.    Whoo Hoo!

In the short term, all the credit goes to Michelle. We finished exactly 30 minutes over optimum – if we hadn’t moved out when we did, we would have been disqualified.

In the longer term, most of what we did was baked in the cake when Sunny was born, so I have Robbie Pruitt to thank for that.  And I have Marybeth to thank for enabling me to give Sunny what support she needs.

So. We had a great first ride. It was really challenging, but I’m ready to do it again.  I’m not sure what I’ll do about the map reading, but there’s got to be a way to convince Michelle to ride with me again!

Lessons learned/ things to work on:

1. I didn’t mention it specifically, but everyone in camp was friendly and helpful, particularly when they found out that I was a new rider.  Linda Thomason, whom I had met last Fall, and Chris, the ride secretary, were both particularly supportive.

2.  Figure out a way to spend the night there after the ride. This time I left right after the awards ceremony because it was SO cold and I was worried about Sunny.  I would like to have stayed and talked to the judges about how to improve our weak areas, as well as socialize with my new tribe.

3.  Sunny didn’t drink as much as she usually does.  They had nice big water tanks, but she scorned them.  I brought her water from home, but she just didn’t seem comfortable drinking her usual amount. The only place she seemed relaxed was drinking from the huge puddles. Fortunately there were a lot of them, but that’s not going to work come September, for example.

4. Find someone to interpret the judges’ comments for me.

5.  Practice lunging on a short line in a flat halter.

6.  More conditioning – Sunny was tapped out by the end of the ride. I don’t know if she could have made it if it had been really hot instead of really cold.

7.  Learn to start my timer when I leave the start, not when I get on Sunny.

wanna ride?

donna

Sunny with her Girth Rope

Sunny has developed a pull back problem over the past year, culminating in a spectacular display on our final checkout ride for the Wilder Ranch Horse Patrol. (BTW, I intend to blog about the Horse Patrol Real Soon Now.)  I’ve been using Blocker Ties with her, which give up some rope under pressure, the idea being that if the horse can get a little relief but still have tension on the poll, they won’t panic, but they will learn that the tension only goes away when they step into it.  And I had her on a Blocker Tie that morning.

Anyhow, something startled her and she went straight up, landed on all four feet, reared, slipped and fell back on the asphalt, which pulled the rope out of the Blocker tie completely.  She scrambled up and I grabbed the rope as it went by.  She did two bucking revolutions around me and came to stop. Sheesh!  It was scary, but it finally motivated me to do something about the problem.  (Note:  I saddled her up and we went on our ride, where she was her normal “What, me worry?” self.)

When I analyzed it, I think I had been making the issue worse by using Blocker ties. Sunny had learned that if she just really stuck to it, she’d eventually get some extra rope. After she figured this out, she did two types of pull-backs:  the truly terrified kind (which I think the Wilder Ranch one was) and the “I-want-to-see-around-the-corner-of-the-trailer” kind.  I wanted to address both, so I went to see Marybeth, as I usually do when I run into a problem.

The first thing that Marybeth did was point out that that on the pull-backs where Sunny was truly scared, the real problem was that when she was startled, her head went up and her body went back – then she ran into the lead rope and it scared her more and it turned into a pull-back. So, for that case, we had to work on Sunny’s “startle reflex” – that is, what she does when she’s surprised.  To do that, we surprised her:  Marybeth jumped up and down and waved flags, etc, while I tried to keep Sunny’s head at a a “normal” place; if it didn’t go up, there wasn’t any pressure.  If her head did go up, I held on until it came down.  We did that one time at Marybeth’s and it got assigned as homework to keep up in Santa Cruz.

The hardest part was to keep startling her:  I’ve worked a lot on desensitizing her to various sounds and sights, so we had to really work to come up with something that she’d respond to, particularly on her home turf. Even when we found something, she’d only be frightened by it the first couple of times we used it, then it was back to the drawing board. And if I do something, by definition, it’s pretty much not scary.  Sheesh. I had Cory be my Horse Startler and she had to work so hard she hurt her back gyrating around!  Also, Marybeth warned that we couldn’t do it often, or Sunny’d start to expect to be scared every time I took her out, thus turning her into a ditzy Arab instead of a sleepy one.

The next issue was the “because-I-wanna” pull backs.  MB addressed these in a couple of ways. First, she had me buy Sunny a flat halter. I always used a rope halter, so the thought was that the flat halter would make Sunny think the rules had changed. Second, since she wasn’t yielding to poll pressure, we used a girth rope on her – it’s in the picture at the top. This is a rope around her body at the withers. When she pulled back, if she didn’t yield to poll pressure, I would tighten  the girth rope a bit, which she responded to instantly. It took about two tries for Sunny to learn how to respond to the girth pressure, then after just a few trials, she started to respond to poll pressure again, so we were off to a good start.

(Note: when we started this, we were in the arena and the girth rope was NOT run through the halter. After she learned what it meant, we set up the arrangement in the picture, which serves the purpose of keeping the ropes organized at the trailer.  This is probably not something you’d want to do without adult supervision.)

I worked on these things at home and returned to Marybeth’s right before our first NATRC ride, where the horses have to be “securely” fastened to the trailers, to see if Sunny had gotten to the point where she didn’t need a girth rope in order to stand still at the trailer. In order to test this, we had to give it a try under conditions as close to a camp out as we could manage.

The first thing MB did was to verify that I’d done my homework: that the startle response was safer, if not completely safe, and that Sunny was responding to poll pressure.  And she was. Yah!

The next item was to actually tie her, surprise her and see how she did. The first step of that process was to set up a safe environment to try it.  MB has a stout little tree growing just outside her arena which she uses for this.  Because of the way the tree is placed, a horse can be tied to the tree while staying in the arena, where the footing is good and it’s pretty safe if the horse does slip.  Also, MB puts a sort of screen over the metal arena fence so a horse can’t slip and cast itself, or put a foot through.

The second step was to attach Sunny to the tree, surprise her and see what happened. Note that I said “attach” not “tie”.  We attached her to the tree by wrapping a rope around it, with an end set up so that, if it was pulled, the wraps would just loosen and Sunny could pull it out under slight tension, and when she stopped, we could pull her back in.

It didn’t matter. We hooked her to the tree and danced around like maniacs. We got her to pull back once for about 10 seconds, then she decided there were better ways to live through the experience, namely by standing still.

So we advanced to the trailer. Marybeth got me an inner tube from a kid’s bike – it was about as wide as it was round, and we attached that to the tie point on my trailer. We then tied the lead rope to that, so there would be some give, but not a lot.  I got a sharp knife (to cut the tube if necessary), we tied Sunny to the trailer via the tube, and we started our scary routine. She pulled back just far enough to test the tire and stopped. And we couldn’t make her do it again.

Soooo, I ate dinner, procrastinated as long as possible, went back to the truck, tied Sunny to the trailer, and went to bed in the camper. I got up about every hour or so to check to see if she was still okay.  She was always okay, and I must have been confident about it because about 2 AM I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 5:30 AM, when she was still quietly standing tied to the trailer, demolishing the alfalfa I’d given her.

So Sunny and Marybeth came through like champs.  Next stop: NATRC!

WOW!  What a week.  Another great camp here at Cowgirl Up Ranch!  I have to say that times like these, I know I am lucky to do what I do.  I so enjoyed sharing ideas and getting to know 8 great ladies.   The weather was great- a blessing considering the storm two days prior to camp and a pretty gloomy day the day after.  Mother nature shined down upon us.  From morning coffee (and Esthers breads) to laughing until our sides hurt after dinner, each day was an adventure.

Hopefully Donna will have a chance to post the pictures after some down time> (and thank you as always for being the camp photographer)  

Thanks again to everyone!