2026 Old Selam Day 3 - Riding with the famous Two Step Betty LTH

September 6 2026

Neither Willie nor I were tempted to do a 50 today (much less the 100 that our pasture mate DWA Papillon and Connie were attempting), so we slept in and saddled up for the LD.

I gave Willie a good walk-about warm up for 15 minutes before the start, and scouted out our competition. Not to see who we could beat, but to see who we might ride with, or, any hot horses we might avoid, as I just wanted, as always, an easy fun ride with no Rocket Pony beneath me to have to apply brakes to for 25 miles.

Nobody looked to be in a big rush anyway, with half the 12 starters standing around talking. Willie was a bit amped, but completely controllable, though I was glad I stuck with his Kemberwick bit and not his jaquima halter sidepull. On our walkabout we met Two Step Betty LTH with Jessica aboard; Betty pinned her ears at Willie, and Jessica laughed. “She hates everybody.”

And once the trail was open, a couple of riders took off, and we ended up walking out beside Betty and Jessica (with plenty of space in between). Betty wasn’t in a big hurry, just off on another day of endurance business, and Willie wasn’t in a big hurry, so we sort of headed out together. Once we crossed the creek and the road and started out on a two-track logging road, Betty was trotting ahead of us and going exactly the pace I wanted for Willie, which he was completely agreeable to. He had his head bowed to his chest, looking all macho and powerful, but he wasn’t pulling on the reins at all. I think Phinneas (RIP) taught Willie to do this, because it makes a horse look like a magnificent racehorse galloping on the track. 

Jessica said we could try riding with Betty, I said we’ll stay back, and if Betty gets mad, we will let you go ahead! We gave Betty plenty of space, which one should do anyway, and not ride up another horse’s butt, for so many reasons. I’m going to write an article on that one day, called “Get Off My A$$.”

But Betty was tolerating us, and our two horses paced really well together. Jessica is a rather amazing human being, not only for being an ICU nurse, but for being a heart transplant patient. For all she’s been through, she’s full of “joy, adventure, and gratitude.” (Read her story https://www.fiacardiac.org/updates/back-in-the-saddle-with-a-new-heart here.)

And Two Step Betty is her own story, a National Show Horse who was a rescue by Vera Kalila’s Love This Horse Equine Rescue in Tehachapi, California. Vera said about Betty in 2024: “The amazing thing about Betty is that she has been rejected and dumped so many times in her life. People misunderstand this mare. She is sweet to the core and has a heart. She loves being out on the trail… We rescued Betty at a loose horse auction in Billings, MT.”

Jessica and her mom Veronica adopted Betty, and despite Betty’s quirks (like hating all horses, even her pasture mates), Jessica loves her and has given Betty a home for life.

And despite her dislike of other horses, Betty not only tolerated Willie, but allowed him to trot up almost beside her at times. She pinned her ears spectacularly, but she sometimes let Willie stay there! 

Betty likes Willie close

Betty does not like Willie close

By the time we finished loop one and strolled into camp, our horses were already pulsed down to the required 60 bpm. During the vet check, Willie ate the entire 40 minutes, maybe the best eating he’d ever done before. 

Willie got to wear his jaquima halter side pull on loop 2. We met up with Jessica and Betty and headed out on our last loop. He could have worn it on loop 1, but I never know if I’m going to need powerful brakes or not, and if you leave camp without the bridle you need, well… good luck!

Neither Willie nor Betty drank on the first 16 mile loop (that’s normal for Willie), but on the second loop they drank from every water trough. After Betty took a good drink from the first trough, Jessica broke off and gave Betty a bite of carrot. Willie heard that Carrot Snap, and kind of horned his way over to Jessica’s saddle bag, innocently blinking his big brown eyes, so he mooched a carrot bite too. After every water trough thereafter, Willie sidled his way over to Jessica, expecting a treat from her! (Which she gave!)

Our horses easily cruised the 9 miles of loop 2, stopping only twice when we came across first one Renegade boot that had come off a horse, and then the other boot! We each rescued and carried a stinky boot in with us to the finish line.

With no racing, just an easy calm ride, we finished up in third and fourth. (That was Betty’s third day of LDs.) Willie and I showed for Best Condition, because we could, and Willie ended up with High Vet Score!

It was another super fun Old Selam ride, great trails, cool weather (!!!), and good peeps. It’s put on by our local SWITnDR club (SouthWest Idaho Trail and Distance Riders). I posted thanks on my FB page, but it all bears repeating here:

I know I will forget somebody, but, THANK YOU 😍 to all the SWITnDR (SouthWest Idaho Trail and Distance Riders) volunteers, before during and after the 3-day ride near Idaho City (with a 100 on day 3!), who helped put on this club ride. I hardly saw ride manager Debbie and trail marking Linda the whole weekend because they were constantly out on trail. Thank you to all who came out the week(s) before, and after, for marking and unmarking trail, and for those who came out for a day or the whole weekend for timing or pulsing, thank you too! Some of you I only got to say Hi to. Thanks Ann for your homemade cookies for us 'special' people 😀. Water troughs were at just the right places all over the trails (John and Carl I’m talking at you). Thank you Cini for being a member of our club and letting us have Ridecamp on your family’s property again! Thanks to Regina and to the vets, Robert and Cassie and we recruited and addicted a new vet Mikaela!

Also thanks to XG Smokehouse from Nampa who made the trip out for the weekend, their food is yummy and they worked tirelessly to keep us hungry monsters fed.

And thanks to Steve Bradley for taking the time to come out and stay and shoot all 3 days of the ride. And don’t forget the entertaining Samuel Anderson from the Old Idaho Penitentiary who came again to tell the story of our ride namesake Old Selam and a couple of other famous Idaho horses and outlaws on Saturday (check out their Behind Gray Walls podcast), and Cowgirl Poet Kathy Moss who entertained us with her poetry Sunday morning.

2026 Old Selam Day 1: Riding with my Hero!

 

September 4 2026

I’d planned to ride Willie on all 3 days of LDs at the Old Selam Pioneer ride. It’s still one of mine and Willie’s favorite rides ever, in the Boise National Forest, on fabulous trails of rolling soft logging roads.

We didn’t train *super* hard ahead of time, but Willie was plenty fit enough for LDs, and we’d have fun riding all 3 days. Horses get better and stronger on the third day in a row, right?

After I vetted in on Thursday for Day 1, my Endurance mentor/hero Suzy Hayes, said, “Don’t you want to ride the 50 on Day 1 with me and Tru? We won’t be going fast and we won’t be going slow.”

First I laughed. Willie and I got our 50 in for the year at City of Rocks. But once it got in my head, it didn’t go away. I’ve never ever gotten to ride with Suzy and finally after all these years, here was the opportunity! This is Suzy Hayes, you know, over 28,000 miles, with one horse in the Hall of Fame in 2011, Kootenai Zizzero, and Pard’ners Award with the same horse in 2007, winner of the Big Horn 100 in 2020 just six weeks after a horse wreck where she broke 10 ribs, fractured two vertebrae, punctured a lung and lacerated her liver, and spent five days in the ICU and 10 more days in the hospital. Yes, that Suzy Hayes! Didn’t take me long to change my mind and my plans, and I told Willie about it, and he was all in. (After an extra bucket of carrots.)

The rather unusual forecast for Old Selam this year was so thrilling, cooler weather and chances of rain! 

I don’t like saddling up in the rain - it rained at night - but I didn’t have to. The rain let up when I woke early to get ready, and we carried rain jackets for the ride.

Trail for the 50s opened at 7 AM, and Suzy and I let everyone go ahead of us. Tru is a rescue horse for Suzy, and she’s bringing him along carefully. There’s always something to learn, from each other, and Suzy and Tru are still in this phase. He wasn’t super experienced, with only 2 completed 50s and a CTR under his girth. 

I was sure hoping Willie was going to set a good example for him, with a calm start. He was wound up as we left camp, but when he saw that Tru wasn’t interested in shenanigans, they both started down the trail trotting like the professionals they could be.

The two moved through the Boise forest, up and down the rolling foothills on the soft two-track logging roads, at times riding above the clouds/fog over the valley, keeping our eyes peeled for moose (we saw none). Sometimes we talked, sometimes we didn’t. Suzy has always been generous with any kind of endurance answers to questions you might ask. She’s been particularly helpful to me and Willie about feeding.

Tru mostly set the pace, but Willie took the lead now and then. He always likes to size up his companions. Are they nice? Will they maybe let him be the boss? He’ll trot close beside and turn his head to his companion, and back off if he or she says so, but Tru kind of ignored Willie, so Willie didn’t have to prove anything. (Or have anything proved to him.) 

Only 10 started the 50, and we started and stayed in the back, only passing Jamethiel and her mare Tarma on the first loop, though we were moving steadily along.

Neither of our horses drank on the first 25-mile loop, but it was a cool morning (YAY!!!), and they pulsed down as soon as they came into camp for the hour hold.

Loop two was a bit slower, and we rode much of it with Shayne from Montana and her horse Major Macs Dragon. Rain started in the middle of the second loop, but it just felt good, and the green forest smelled good and looked so happy. The ground soaked up the rain so well (and it had soaked up the previous two nights’ rains) there was only one place that was getting a little slick as we came into camp for the finish.

Alas, Tru was lame in the hind end at his final trot-out, and later Suzy and vet Robert saw an unusual lump on his hock which will need investigating. Willie ended up with the turtle award, a nice little shot glass which he noted would not hold a carrot. No matter, he got plenty when he was finished!

We did show for Best Condition, because we could (though I’m a featherweight, so not a big chance, and the winner, Sanoma Blakeley, was an hour ahead of us), and because I really like the vet to watch Willie trot out an hour later, to see how he *really* looks. If the vet sees something, I want to know. Willie sometimes  trots out with what vet Robert calls a “Standardbred Wiggle”, and Connie got a video of us, so I know what he’s talking about! 

Willie was tired enough that we decided to sit out Day 2’s LD ride. So he got to hang out with his two buddies, DWA Barack (our weekend babysitter) and DWA Papillon, who would be doing the 100 with Connie on day 3!

Top photo by Steve Bradley!

So, About That Old Selam Chicken...

Sunday August 31 2025

By Sunday, everybody was used to that rooster chicken hanging around ride camp central. Why not, he was getting all kinds of good leftover scraps, and being admired by the humans. 

At one of the ride meetings he startled Joe the vet when he jumped up on a little table by him.

Art took this one

A few people tried to catch him, but nobody could. And someone said that if someone caught him, someone might take him home. Maybe it was Hayley who would take him home. Maybe it was the Haflas. Or maybe it was Bentley.

But either way, the chicken socialized and pecked on all weekend.

Late Sunday morning, John Stevens came up to Ridecamp central, and he had his little mini rat terrier kind of dog, Spud, with him. John set him on the ground, and when Spud spied that rooster, he took off like a shot after him. Rooster chicken started running in circles, not all *that* hard, and the little dog was running as fast as it could, spinning his wheels trying to catch that chicken. 

Robert the vet was sitting in a chair watching the chicken run circles around him, with the dog chasing for all he was worth, intent on catching this chicken that was twice his size, when the rooster suddenly jumped in Robert’s lap!

Robert jumped up holding the rooster, 

who actually seemed quite content in Robert’s arms, while the dog leaped up and came down with a couple of tail feathers in his mouth. 

John had a hard time trying to catch his might hunter dog, who was running circles around Robert and the rooster, still hoping to get a bigger mouthful of chicken, while rooster calmly and serenely settled in Robert’s arms and looked down at his would-be assassin.

The rooster caught, he was put into one of Regina’s big dog crates, and the hunt for his new owner commenced. Hayley’s mom Lindsay said “No! We don’t want a rooster! Who came up with that rumor?” Someone else said No, Bentley wasn’t taking a rooster home. Haflas were nowhere to be seen in the rooster conversation. Meanwhile the rooster seemed quite pleased with himself, hanging out in the big dog crate with his own bowl of water and dog food snacks.

Finally Karen B said she’d take the rooster. For real? Yes, and she was ready to pull out, so we toted the dog crate to her trailer, and slipped the rooster and crate in with Peanut for the ride home to Oreana and Bates Creek.

Rooster settled in nicely at Karen’s place. He’s happily crowing away early in the mornings, coming for food when Karen calls “chick chick chick” and ruling the roost, i.e. scaring Sylvester the cat, the Big Game Hunter. Sylvester thought *he* might have a chicken snack and started stalking the rooster, but the rooster made one cockadoodledoo at Sylvester, and the cat ran for cover. 

“So meet Sam,” Karen said, “short for Selam. What else ya gonna call a rooster from the Old Selam ride camp.”

He’s the new Bates Crick Mascot!

Karen took this one at home, with Peanut and Sylvester admiring their new Companion

**Diane Stevens reminded me that Spud is a 9 month old 1/2 Jack Russel 1/2 Pomeranian**

2025 Old Selam Part III: Willie the Rocket Ship

August 31 2025 

So I trotted out for the vet Dick in the morning, and he said Willie looked fine. So, off Willie and I went on the day two 25-mile LD ride.

I had the plan of just ambling along on a pleasant trail ride LD for the day, because, you know, Willie ought to be a little tired from yesterday, right? 

And it started out that way. There were around 22 riders, and Willie was calm while we warmed up walking around camp. I always look for a little pocket where I might get a little Bubble, usually up near the front, not behind the fastest riders, but not where I’ll be tailed/chased closely by other riders.

And as the trail was announced open, three or four riders started walking out, which I thought was great. We fell in behind them, and walked out, and then they started trotting, but suddenly the front ones balked, and we got bunched up, and after they got going, they took off like a shot, and unfortunately, so did we. 

Oh heck no Willie was not tired. Or relaxed. Those riders up front were blasting down the trail and I was blasting after them on a rocket ship. I tried to convince him just to slow down a bit already, working hard on not just pulling but using strong seat and leg and *suggesting* with my hands on the reins to slow down… but it became more of a pullfest.

He pulled and pulled and at some point you have to decide, you’re both wasting so much energy pulling on each other, is it just better to let Willie go fast and stay with the fast horses, because that’s just how things work out sometimes.

At least the weather was nice and cool, and Willie felt perfectly sound. 

I was able to drop him back for a while, with another horse following me, but my hands would start to go to sleep trying to hold Willie back. He’s not always like this, but today he certainly was. 

So as you’d expect, the first 15 mile loop flew by really fast. Willie finally caught up with and rode with three others, (another lady had left everybody in the dust far ahead). And finally the last 5 miles or so, our group slowed down a bit, even walked up some hills, which was nice. I didn’t want to pass anybody, but their horses really started slowing down, so at the last water trough, Willie just went on ahead, much calmer, and on a loose rein, back into camp. 

He pulsed down right away, and I checked the out timer sheet later, and hooray, we were going to have our own lovely little Bubble on loop 2! We were about 10 minutes behind the first horse, and there was about eight minutes to the next horses behind us.

So I put on his jaquima halter for the last 9 mile loop, and OMG we had the best ride, cruising easily and comfortably, not fast and not slow, trotting along the winding soft logging roads in the forest, the trails to ourselves. This is what I hoped the first loop would have been like, but that’s okay, because loop 2 was so awesome!

Willie ended up finishing second, and I never felt a single bad step, so I said we would show for best condition.

At his 10 minute CRI Willie was 44-44 !!!!! The vet Robert said, “*Clearly* you overrode this horse.” 🤣

(For those who don’t know, the vet takes a pulse, the horse trots out 20 yards or so and back, he waits a minute, and takes the second pulse. A pulse that jumps from, say, 56 to 70 shows the horse is a bit fatigued. A low pulse rate, particularly the second pulse, is awesome. Willie usually vets in before the ride at 40.)

But, OMG, when Willie trotted out, Robert said he saw a couple of odd steps again! Just slight and only a couple, not consistent. OMG! I had felt nothing again all day. 

But we still came back to do the BC showing an hour later with the vet Dick, a thorough exam and a trot-out, and Willie looked perfect!

When he finished his exam on Willie, Dick said, “I’m gonna tell you two things about your horse.” I thought, uh oh, what’s wrong! Tell me, I always want to learn. 

He said, “First of all, you still have a knot in his tail.” (oh yeah, I gotta get that out with some cowboy magic). “And second," Dick grinned, "I think he’s way too small for you.” My 16.2 or 17 hand horse. Lol!

And later in the evening at the awards, Willie not only got high vet score (!!!!) but Best Condition!!!!!  I love my Standardbred!!

I decided not to do an LD on day three, because I think there was something going on with this feet, possibly the pads that I squirted in when he had soft soles from two days of rain. We’d leave it on a great note. What a great weekend at Old Selam, still one of our most favorite rides!

Also, that rooster chicken was still hanging around ride camp, having dinner with everybody and planting himself front and center stage while a guy named Sam from the Idaho State Penitentiary - where the story of Old Selam the prison horse began in 1900 - told a mesmerizing story about Old Selam and the prison escapees he carried to freedom or almost-freedom, and while the ride awards were going on. 

A few people had tried to catch the rooster, and they got close, but they couldn’t quite get him. Someone said that if someone caught it, someone would take him home. You know how those “someone” rumors start. He’d obviously wandered away from some homes or been dumped there, and he looked quite at home around people and also must have been pretty adept at hiding in the forest.

 

Note The Raven on Willie's back, of course The Raven rode along with us this weekend. It's over 9000 miles for The Raven! 

and top photo by Steve Bradley! 

2025 Old Selam Part I: Before the Ride

Friday August 29 2025

I learned a lot!

Originally my lofty goal was to ride three days of 50s at Old Selam. This is one of my favorite rides ever, mostly along soft-footing old logging roads, gentle ups and downs with just a few climbs/downhills, ample water, and the lovely Boise National Forest, with the occasional wildlife sightings. More to come on that!

Willie was fit, from rides and from spending several weeks at the DWA Arabians spa in Bellevue with Helen, where I got to go up and ride him a couple times on some really good training rides. So he was ready. The question was me in the heat, and as the ride got closer, and the forecast showed it was going to get hotter each day, I decided to do a 50 on day one and then play the rest by ear. I just can’t handle the heat this year.

The three days of the ride would be Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We arrived on Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon ride manager Debbie asked me if I could go out with her and help mark a little bit of trail on foot that was left to mark on one of the loops (I'm always up for hiking and marking trail). 

We went out on the ATV and checked some things, but ran out of daylight, so Thursday morning we went back out. She dropped me off at a spot and I had about a 2-mile hike of marking trail, and then I would meet her back on the road.

I ambled along the lovely, cool forest, which smelled so great because we’d had a great downpour the day and night before. It was so misty riding on the ATV that my glasses stayed fogged up. I hiked along hanging ribbons, keeping my eyes out for moose, and while I was hiking along a creek thick with willows, I came around the corner and WHOA, there on the hillside was the biggest moose I have ever seen.

It wasn’t just huge, it was HYUGE, a big bull moose, up the hill about 40 yards away, and he turned to look at me. (Of course I'm on foot so it looked even bigger, but. it was HYUGE.) OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I needed the moose to leave because my trail went below him, and I couldn’t hike all the way back to where I started. but how the heck do you move a HYUGE bull moose?? 

So, I crept forward to behind a lodgepole pine that had a trunk about a foot wide, and I started yelling and whistling at Mr. Moose. I hollered and I whistled myself blue in the face, and all he did was look my way and tried to zero in on me. I figured if he moved anywhere, he was going to move down to the trail and on into the willows. At least I *hoped* he would. 

But instead, he started moving towards me! OMG. My heart started thumping really hard. I made myself very very small behind this tree and I shut up. He knew something was behind the tree. 

And then he moved closer!!! OMG!!! I looked up this tree to see if I might be able to climb it if I had to, and believe me I could have if I had to. He moved even closer to within about 20 yards of me and I stopped breathing. And I prayed a couple of times. Keep moving to the creek. Keep moving to the creek.

I was trying to rack my brain as to what I knew about moose. I knew they hated dogs. I thought they didn’t like people, but I wasn’t sure. Later, Robert Ribley told me a scary story about nearly being attacked by a moose, and then Anne told me about a moose encounter she had where (long story) she suddenly found herself in front of a moose in her driveway, and she did the only thing that came to mind, which was to drop down and curl up and play dead like you do for a grizzly bear (turns out this instinct is a good choice). The moose actually came and sniffed her face while her eyes were watching its hooves before it wandered off.

I had an idea that moose couldn’t see very well, but that couldn’t stop him from getting irritated at whatever was spying on him from behind the tree. He crept a few feet closer, and I would inch around the tree trunk, trying to stay very skinny.

Finally, thank the Lord, he turned down to the creek and trotted on into the thick willows. I waited a little bit and got back to breathing normally, then I made a big wide swerve up the hill and around where he had been. OMG!!!!!!!!!

So then, Debbie picked me up on the ATV and we continued on with her driving and me hanging the ribbons, and we came to a creek crossing, which we drove into just fine and out of, but going up the other side was a short steep, super soft few lengths of sand. I saw that and said I’m skeered, and I jumped off! (I am afraid of ATVs if the road is not completely flat .) 

Debbie tried to gun it up, but the sand was too soft and the four wheeler just dug four deep holes. So we were stuck, and stuck good. But. Debbie was smart enough to have had a winch installed on that ATV, so I got to learn about winching an ATV! 

We tried one tree and then had to get a different angle and used another tree, and then had to move the winch hook to a third tree, but the winch was two inches too short, but Debbie had two belts for padding the tree and connected them together with a steel carabiner. I stayed far away in case something snapped and broke, but by golly Mighty Red the ATV got winched up that little hill with Deb nursing/steering it along and out of that sand and we hopped back on and kept on marking trail! I may never have to winch an ATV out of a spot again, but I know how now!

But we weren’t quite done with adventure. We had one more creek to cross, but it was more like a dammed up beaver pond, and with all the rain we had, the water was quite high, so it wasn’t even possible to lift your feet high enough and keep them dry because the ATV was like halfway under water, but Deb just gunned it, and Mighty Red swam and got through there, but coming out of the pond, OMG, the wheels grasped for traction in the mud, and there was a little hill, and the ATV did a wheelie, and I thought I was going to die, but before I could get too skeered and bail off we were out. Booya!!!! I hate ATVs but I love Mighty Red!

The rest of the day was pretty much boring, just the usual, vetting in my horse and getting ready for riding the next day!

Also, there was a semi tame rooster chicken hanging around ride camp central.