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Oct. 2nd, 2005 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickToday I rode the IRH home from LynnAnn's house. This is a distance of 4.5 miles, give or take, including an underpass that goes under I-70.
It went. The IRH does not like cars. She does not like trucks. She does not like motorcycles, bicycles, baby carriages... She's just a not-liking horse. Riding home from LynnAnn's involved going alongside the road. There were vehicles. The IRH was pretty idiot-ish, particularly for the motorcycles. And the one pickup truck. And several of the passenger cars. And for the entirety of the underpass. I have to say that underpasses under four-lane interstates are a lot longer than you think they are, particularly when you're going sideways on a horse that feels like she's about to spring out of her skin. Anyway, I didn't come off of the horse. I did not let the horse get away from me. I, in point of fact, was more-or-less in control of the horse for all of the road riding that we did. It was not sedate and it wasn't relaxing but I didn't feel particularly not-in-control. *sigh* I wish like hell she'd get better at this. (Full disclosure: She IS getting better. I am whining. In reality, I didn't used to be able to ride her along the road at all. She used to buck like hell and put me the fuck OFF when cars came by. That was where we started. Then I could ride along not-very-busy roads with huge shoulders and maybe one or two cars. Then I could do roads with larger groups of riders so that the cars would slow down a whole lot and be less scary. The fact that we can now do roads with a vehicle every couple of minutes, in a group of five riders, with only about six feet of shoulder, is a hell of an improvement. If we'd had like ten or twelve riders, and been in the middle of the pack there, she'd have done better. Where we are is still not good enough to be going on with, but it's an improvement, a big one, from the beginning of the riding season. We have made progress.)
Because the long hill up from Gapsville to Liss's house has no shoulder on either side and because cars and trucks and FREIGHT TRUCKS (we are not even remotely ready for freight trucks) go upwards of fifty miles an hour on that stretch of road, I asked that we not go that way. I didn't feel that there was enough room for the horse to be stupid. I didn't feel safe about it -- I'll tolerate a fair amount with the IRH these days because I have some experience and because she's not quite out of her mind with stupidity. (She was doing circles on a very limited piece of shoulder and halfway through, noticed the guard rail (the old kind with cable wire) whereupon she was like "Er. Don't want my feet in that. I'll do a smaller, less leap-y circle here." How the hell scared can she be if she's noticing the scenery enough to not run into the guard rails?) Anyway, if I don't feel safe, I don't feel safe. It's one of those things. I am not really looking to die on the IRH. If we hadn't done a different route, I'd have gotten off and led her up the hill, which is about half a mile long and one hell of a climb.
There weren't many other options and Liss picked the offroad one because it was shorter. It might have been shorter as the crow flies but there were hills of verticality. When I say verticality, I really do mean that. The hills (up and down) were an amount of steep that you would probably not be comfortable walking on foot. You'd have been like "We have to go up that? Really?" The thing to remember is that horses (at least our horses -- stall and paddock dwellers are less capable of handling steep terrain) are off-road vehicles. They have four-foot-drive. They have a built-in not-falling-over system and they are very fond of not falling over. Don't worry. The horse will be fine. You the rider, you grab a handful of mane and lean foward a bit. Give the horse a little extra rein and make sure you've got a good grip with your legs. Fortune favors the brave, chickie. Odds are pretty good that it'll be all right.
Interestingly, the IRH, who is incredibly stupid on paved roads and in traffic situations, is rock-solid in the woods. Absolutely nothing bothers her. Brush, briars, tree limbs, rocks, terrain of all sorts, all water crossings, me laying flat on her neck to get under branches, me getting on and off in very rough terrain (to fix saddles for the helpless), waiting her turn while we find a way through the mess... all of those systems are A-1 top notch. It's freaking weird, is what it is. Anyway, the IRH trucked right up the hill. We were on someone's gravel driveway (we were, er, defiantly trespassing) and we turned perpendicular to it and I asked her to go up the side of a cliff (it was quite a slope -- she had to rock back to get her front feet high enough to start up the hill) and she just freaking went. Liss, on Sphinx, was not exactly in front of us -- the IRH wasn't following along. She was all set to truck right on up the side of the cliff on my say-so. Damn. And we can't do passenger cars? I don't get it.
It went. The IRH does not like cars. She does not like trucks. She does not like motorcycles, bicycles, baby carriages... She's just a not-liking horse. Riding home from LynnAnn's involved going alongside the road. There were vehicles. The IRH was pretty idiot-ish, particularly for the motorcycles. And the one pickup truck. And several of the passenger cars. And for the entirety of the underpass. I have to say that underpasses under four-lane interstates are a lot longer than you think they are, particularly when you're going sideways on a horse that feels like she's about to spring out of her skin. Anyway, I didn't come off of the horse. I did not let the horse get away from me. I, in point of fact, was more-or-less in control of the horse for all of the road riding that we did. It was not sedate and it wasn't relaxing but I didn't feel particularly not-in-control. *sigh* I wish like hell she'd get better at this. (Full disclosure: She IS getting better. I am whining. In reality, I didn't used to be able to ride her along the road at all. She used to buck like hell and put me the fuck OFF when cars came by. That was where we started. Then I could ride along not-very-busy roads with huge shoulders and maybe one or two cars. Then I could do roads with larger groups of riders so that the cars would slow down a whole lot and be less scary. The fact that we can now do roads with a vehicle every couple of minutes, in a group of five riders, with only about six feet of shoulder, is a hell of an improvement. If we'd had like ten or twelve riders, and been in the middle of the pack there, she'd have done better. Where we are is still not good enough to be going on with, but it's an improvement, a big one, from the beginning of the riding season. We have made progress.)
Because the long hill up from Gapsville to Liss's house has no shoulder on either side and because cars and trucks and FREIGHT TRUCKS (we are not even remotely ready for freight trucks) go upwards of fifty miles an hour on that stretch of road, I asked that we not go that way. I didn't feel that there was enough room for the horse to be stupid. I didn't feel safe about it -- I'll tolerate a fair amount with the IRH these days because I have some experience and because she's not quite out of her mind with stupidity. (She was doing circles on a very limited piece of shoulder and halfway through, noticed the guard rail (the old kind with cable wire) whereupon she was like "Er. Don't want my feet in that. I'll do a smaller, less leap-y circle here." How the hell scared can she be if she's noticing the scenery enough to not run into the guard rails?) Anyway, if I don't feel safe, I don't feel safe. It's one of those things. I am not really looking to die on the IRH. If we hadn't done a different route, I'd have gotten off and led her up the hill, which is about half a mile long and one hell of a climb.
There weren't many other options and Liss picked the offroad one because it was shorter. It might have been shorter as the crow flies but there were hills of verticality. When I say verticality, I really do mean that. The hills (up and down) were an amount of steep that you would probably not be comfortable walking on foot. You'd have been like "We have to go up that? Really?" The thing to remember is that horses (at least our horses -- stall and paddock dwellers are less capable of handling steep terrain) are off-road vehicles. They have four-foot-drive. They have a built-in not-falling-over system and they are very fond of not falling over. Don't worry. The horse will be fine. You the rider, you grab a handful of mane and lean foward a bit. Give the horse a little extra rein and make sure you've got a good grip with your legs. Fortune favors the brave, chickie. Odds are pretty good that it'll be all right.
Interestingly, the IRH, who is incredibly stupid on paved roads and in traffic situations, is rock-solid in the woods. Absolutely nothing bothers her. Brush, briars, tree limbs, rocks, terrain of all sorts, all water crossings, me laying flat on her neck to get under branches, me getting on and off in very rough terrain (to fix saddles for the helpless), waiting her turn while we find a way through the mess... all of those systems are A-1 top notch. It's freaking weird, is what it is. Anyway, the IRH trucked right up the hill. We were on someone's gravel driveway (we were, er, defiantly trespassing) and we turned perpendicular to it and I asked her to go up the side of a cliff (it was quite a slope -- she had to rock back to get her front feet high enough to start up the hill) and she just freaking went. Liss, on Sphinx, was not exactly in front of us -- the IRH wasn't following along. She was all set to truck right on up the side of the cliff on my say-so. Damn. And we can't do passenger cars? I don't get it.
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Date: 2005-10-03 01:45 pm (UTC)