which_chick | (no subject)

The twenty-mile (probably more like twenty-three miles) practice ride for The Ride went pretty well. We headed out on Sunday morning, got the horses caught in a fair amount of time, and went to hook up the truck to the trailer.

The truck wasn't already hooked up because my truck, which steers and has brakes and stuff... the clutch went to the floor and stayed there on Saturday. It's at the shop and we're all hoping like hell that it gets fixed in time to use on Friday to haul to The Ride. Sunday, we had to use Trysta's emergency backup truck, which is somewhat less fun to operate. It wouldn't start so we had to hunt for cables and then it did start.

We loaded up and hauled to Ede's. We unloaded. Phantom (the grey idiot) was lame on driver's side rear, as he has been, off and on, for a couple of weeks. He got to stay in the field and, in a change of plans, La took Reno and Katie took Ember. We headed off into the wilds below Crystal Spring.

We rode along I-70 (there's a county road that goes right beside it) to Fisher's Garage and then went past Lynn Ann's house and out Pleasant Valley/Piper to Pittman Road. That was all paved road but there were not very many cars (fewer than one-per-mile) and they all slowed down. We hit Pittman Road and headed up that. In what seemed like an alarmingly short period of time, we got to the turn for Roaring Run Road, which my horse knows pretty well. She took the lead for that and we flew. We did a mile and a half out to Akersville Road, then turned right and headed up the hill to Tower Trail. (Akersville is blue gravel secondary road like Bark. We did a lot of blue gravel on this ride b/c that's what we're getting in State College next weekend according to the map that the Late-Breaking Ride Update has told us to ignore. We're supposed to get new maps at the pre-ride meeting.)

We'd never been on Tower Trail, so that was kind of experimental. Since they'd redone the signs, we found the turn. The trail was somewhat steep (but quite doable -- good footing) down to the creek and back up out of the hollow. I reckon we'll be doing that one again. There were a couple of downed trees that we detoured around, but otherwise the trail was clear. Tower Trail goes to the fire tower and the cell towers and such. There, we picked up Cliff Trail (which we figure had to be built by a guy named Cliff because there weren't any actual cliffs in evidence) and headed out that to Bark Road.

Originally, we'd planned to take Cliff Trail to Rock Oak Road (which is not endless blue gravel) but since we'd never ridden the damn thing before, we didn't know where the Rock Oak turn was. Yes, there are signs. Sometimes. This was not one of those times. The signs that there were said (among other things) "Roaring Run Trail" and I was NOT doing that again so we went straight instead because I knew that would hit Bark. When in doubt, go for the sure route. Cliff Trail, which we had also not done previously, is a lovely and horse-friendly trail that is reasonably level and has good footing. Despite some fussing about my navigational skills, we wound up on Bark Road just fine and from there it was a straight shot (7.5 miles of blue gravel) to Boorman Road and then home.

On the way to Boorman, we passed Betsy Road (which is nearly always "the way home" for Nick and Casper) and after we passed that, our horses were not particularly forward. Their general assessment was "You idiots are lost. THE TURN FOR HOME was back there and you didn't take it. Stupid humans." It was not until about halfway down Boorman Road that Nick picked up and knew where she was at again. We made it home in just about four hours, which isn't bad for the distance.

Conditioning assessment: Nick isn't bad. She sweated up more than some... Song looked freaking fantastic, like she'd gone for a three mile hack instead of a twenty-odd mile forced march. Aurora looked pretty good, probably better than we did, but we looked about as good as Lakota and Casper, better than Reno, Chance, Ember, and Country. I think we'll be okay during The Ride. I just wish Cass would stay with me -- we haven't done nearly as much cantering as everyone else (because you're SUPPOSED to trot, damn it all) and our horses don't handle it as well as they do endless trotting (which we have done rather a lot of). You gotta ride like you practiced. However, she ignores me in public so that she can ride with her friend Katie and/or look cool by making her pony jig. All of that drives me batshit.

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I'm getting a great education on horses and horse riding from reading your entries. The idea of riding never really appealed to me, but it actually sounds interesting and fun (albeit not ALL fun) the way you describe it.

It's fun, at least for me. There's a pretty big learning curve and I wouldn't suggest it *at all* unless you like horses, real ones, the large prey animals that move suddenly and are lots bigger and stronger than you are. (Many people think horses are like "big dogs". They are not much at all like dogs.)

For my mother, who wants a cheat sheet.

Tasha (the vet's daughter, Christine's cousin) rode Aurora, a Shadow great great granddaughter. Shadow -> Nimbus -> Sombra -> Shade -> Aurora. She's a chestnut (reddish) mare with some white.

Mary (Tasha's friend) rides Geronimo (she'll be at The Ride but had to work for the prep ride discussed here), a dark bay (dark brown) and white pinto. He's mostly white and has a blue eye.

La is riding Phantom, the grey idiot. Phantom is half-brother to Nick through their sire Jerez. He's out of Sierra, the Mai Tai x Fash daughter of Liss's that died a couple of years back.

Cass is riding Casper. Casper is a chocolate silver pony, daughter of Witch (the red pony La used to ride back in the day).

TJ (Tina's middle boy) is riding Chance, a big red roan (pink) TWH gelding who belongs to Tasha. TJ will be riding Chance on The Ride but Tasha's friend Dorothy does the conditioning rides.

Tracy (Mary's niece and TJ's girlfriend) will be riding Tasha's bay pinto mare Country. Country (reddish brown with a few small, white spots and a black mane and tail) is nasty to Nick in the field.

Gillian is riding Lakota, daughter of her old (dead) mare Bluebell and out of some QH stud named Dakota. Lakota is grey.

On The Ride, Katie is riding Reno, gelded son of Gillian's old, dead mare Minx and out of some QH stud named Dakota. Reno is a dark chestnut (red) and he belongs to Kim, Tasha's cousin. La rode Reno on this prep ride b/c Phantom was lame. On the prep ride, Katie rode Ember, a little grey mare older than dirt whom Katie is taking to states.

Karen (Tasha's friend) is riding Song, a dark bay (very dark brown with black trim) mare that belongs to Tasha. Song is a Pet daughter by some stud that Galen liked. She's in her early twenties but is still very solid and energetic.

You touched on something that has always puzzled me - why are horses so damned scared of everything? They don't have any natural predators do they? A grizzly could never catch them. Nothing else is a threat, at least on this continent. Also, how could ancient militaries get them from that state of fear and paranoia to a state in which they had no problem galloping right to their deaths?

Horses are prey animals. They are the animals that get eaten and not the animals that do the eating. The horses we have now come from the steppes of asia and I don't know what ate 'em. Something did. For the vast bulk of equine species history, the slow, nonreactive horses got eaten. The fast, wary, reactive horses lived to make more horses. It is difficult to overcome thousands and thousands (the genus equus evolved about four million years ago, so something that looked/acted like real horses should have been around by then) of years of natural selection for fast, wary, and reactive by a couple thousand years of domestication (horses were probably domesticated along about 4000 BC unless Wikipedia is lying to me).

The flight thing is not the end of the world. Horses are fairly curious by nature and they acclimate to new stuff pretty well. They can be *taught* and charge into battle in the face of weapons, blood, screaming, and dying horses all around you is one of the things that they can be taught. It is, after all, only a slight modification of go where you are aimed.

As well, horses have a very solid, structured herd hierarchy. Each horse has a place in the pecking order and each horse knows his or her place. They don't need to be the top horse but they need to know who the top horse is. (Contrary to popular belief, the top horse is nearly always a mare.) Horses also will accept a human as top horse, which is nice. If a human is top horse, and the human says "Go there, RIGHT NOW", the horse will go, no argument.

These things make horses work-with-able. The flight thing is there, but it's not impossible to deal with.