It (Still) Takes A Village...

Sunday April 17 2011

...And everything in it to go to a 1-day endurance ride 10 miles down the road. It's the Owyhee Tough Sucker endurance ride, the first of the season. Literally, we could have ridden our 4 horses to basecamp on Friday, but we hauled them over - horse in one trailer, and things in the other.

You just don't know what all you'll need, so you might as well take everything. I take as much stuff to a one-day ride 10 miles down the road as I do to a 4-day ride halfway across the country!


Carol hauled her horse Justy, and our three horses Rhett, Mac, and Jose, in her trailer down to basecamp at Regina's old place, and we hauled our trailer full of stuff - grass hay, grass-alfalfa hay, oats, senior, beet pulp, supplements, apples, carrots, apple crunch treats, buckets, blankets (6 - because what if it rained overnight and the blankets got wet, and we needed more during the ride?), easyboot gloves, extra easyboot gloves, hoofpicks and hammers (to put the gloves on), brushing boots, saddles, saddle pads (and an extra one), bridles, extra sidepull for Jose, girths - and whatever else I'm forgetting to mention.

And, not to mention the huge bag of clothes and jackets I took along. I've had Jacket Angst ever since I lost my favorite riding jacket on our Wild Horse Butte training ride. I'm not emotionally attached to it, but it was just the perfect all-weather jacket - for warm weather, cool, cold, wind, rain, and snow. Now I carried about 10 jackets or vests to try to match that one jacket's efficiency (and still haven't succeeded in finding the right combo).


Moisture-heavy clouds and showers danced all around basecamp while rigs pulled in during the afternoon and evening, and Dr Robert Washington vetted horses in; but it never did rain. Weather was expected to be much the same tomorrow - overcast, chance of showers, but not so hot, and with enough of a breeze to keep the dreaded gnats away.

I'd be riding my pal Jose. It was looking to be the perfect day for our first Owyhee spring endurance ride.

The Best

Saturday April 16 2011

I'll have much more to say, but to sum up the Owyhee Tough Sucker 50 mile endurance ride, all I have to say is, Jose is the BEST!

(awesome photo along the Snake River by Steve Bradley)

Bye Bye Ben

Tuesday April 12 2011

He's a kind soul.

He came here for the September 5-day Owyhee Canyonlands ride, but when his owner Brian was seriously injured (on another horse), Ben stayed here.


He really looked bewildered the first week - enough that I felt I had to explain to him what happened. I actually told him in human words, "Brian got hurt, it's not your fault. He left you here to stay with us for a while. We'll take care of you." I think he understood me because I swear the baffled look faded away.


He never really fit into the Owyhee herd - always stood on the outer edges, waiting to get to the hay after everybody else had wandered off. He always came up to me to sniff my hands, to get a pet, to listen to words. I always stopped to give them to him.


Brian spent the next 6 months recuperating, deciding if he wanted to keep Ben or not. Brian put Ben up for sale. Someone snapped him up. He's leaving today with Jeff.

Jeff comes to the Owyhee endurance rides, so I'll likely get to see Ben again. I left a message that buying Ben comes with visitation rights for me.

So long Ben, happy trails.

Who's In Charge

Monday April 11 2011

When you go out for a ride on your horse, who's captain of the ship? Are you in control of your horse, do you and your horse work as partners, or is your horse steering the boat?

One thing to keep in mind is that your horse already knows everything you will want him to do.

Your horse only has two buttons - stop and go, and 4 directions: forward, backward, left and right. Watch any horse interact with another horse. Every horse knows these commands and directions. A day old foal already knows how to stop and go, move forward, backward, left and right. He may do it awkwardly, but he already does all of this.


You might include the directions upward (rearing) or downward (going down) - but these are normally responses to play or escape - and by your incorrect requests you may be causing your horse to rear or try to escape.

So there you go - every horse is born naturally knowing everything he needs to know, and it takes the first dominant horse (like his dam) to come along to make him realize and demonstrate this.

What horses aren't born with is the understanding of human communication. We often speak two very different languages. What many people don't understand (until they learn) is how to communicate to their horse how to perform what they already know. Some of it is more difficult, when you factor in Attitude (the horse's or the person's), but much of this just comes down to practice.

Does your horse disrespect your space when you are on the ground? Does he crowd you? Does he totally ignore you? This is not acceptable. A horse is too big and heavy - and potentially lethal - to not be paying attention to you and following your command.

All those Natural Horseman trainers, love them or hate them, agree on one basic thing: start with the ground work. If you don't have the respect of your horse from the ground, you're not going to have it on his back.


Your horse should respect you and your space. Your horse should move forward, backward, left or right when you ask. It shouldn't take him five minutes to respond, nor 5 seconds; he should do it as soon as you ask him. Nor should it take a shove with a crowbar to get him to move his feet. He should respond instantly to your light touch or gesture. A horse can feel a tiny fly bite his hide, and a horse will move away from another horse's gesture of pinned ears and a head toss; so if he doesn't respond to your ounce of pressure or your gestures that he understands, he is ignoring you and disrespecting you.

And you're not going to hurt your horse, or hurt his feelings, if you ask him to do something he already knows. You might, however, ultimately hurt yourself.

Clinton Anderson has a great article on this very subject on Equisearch.com: http://www.equisearch.com/horses_riding_training/training/general/clinton-anderson-dont-get-emotional-when-training-horses

If you do a little of something every day, it becomes your natural habit. Even if your horse knows everything and responds instantly to everything you ask him, every day, before you get on your horse to ride, do just a little ground work - make him move forward, backward, turn on the forehand (plant his front feet and pivot his hind end), turn on the backhand (plant his back feet and pivot his front end), step to the left, step to the right - you'll get an idea of whether or not he's using his brain today or if his mind is elsewhere.

And every day when you climb in the saddle, do the same thing from his back: move him forward, backward, step to the left and right, turn on the forehand, turn on the backhand. Do the same thing when you return from a ride, making that your last dance. It doesn't take two minutes once you've learned to communicate, and it will just become a natural part of your time together - and it will make you and your horse better communicators and better partners.

Some horses need more practice than others. Some people need more practice than others. It's easy and doesn't take time out of your ride - when you just do it, a little every day, it becomes part of your ride. Daily practice will become habit, habit will become natural.

If you don't know how to teach your horse the basics, get some help. Find a friend or a trainer who knows what he or she is doing and have them teach you; go to a horsemanship clinic; at the least, find videos on Youtube or watch some of those DVDs by the Natural Horseman trainers. Then practice. Start the habit.

When your horse respects you more, you become more like partners and you can concentrate on other things - like just having fun together.

CAMWHAB

Saturday Aprl 9 2011

This was the day, come rain, sleet, snow, hail, wind, heat, cold, Carol and I were going a 20 mile ride, no excuses, no whining. Jose and Justy needed a good long ride, with the 50 mile Tough Sucker coming up next weekend. Justy needed some wind taken out of her sails, and Jose just needed to do a long ride, as he hasn't had one since November 1st. Come to think of it, Carol and I needed a long ride too.

We got up and on the trail early (well, 9:30), into the cold, into the brisk wind, and we did our ride.


We headed north up onto the flats, to and across the highway, and toward Wild Horse Butte along the Snake River. The cold wind blustered and made our eight eyes and four noses water, but our horses trotted along handily at an average of 9.5-10.5 mph.

We'd already hit around 10 miles when we got to Wild Horse Butte, so we opted to not go all the way around it, and instead of turning around, we took a different loop back - taking trails we knew, but trying to guess where we'd exactly we'd end up.

We followed the Oregon trail for a while (somebody seems to have made it their mission to break all the BLM Oregon Trail posts along this section), and instead of following the usual trail into the neato winding deep wash, we missed it, and ended up following a new road. I thought at one time I knew exactly where we were... but I'm still not sure if I was right. Things sometimes look completely different when you're moving the opposite way.


One could have said we were lost - but out here you can't get lost. If you go too far one way you'll hit the Snake River; too far another way you'll hit Oregon, waaaaaaaay too far another way you'll hit Wyoming; too far the other way you'll hit the Owyhee mountains and home.

We trotted onward, following a soft two-track road that eventually petered out onto a hill that eventually ran into... a road we knew that led us right back to the highway. Saved!

We missed another shortcut trail back and ended up touring through the tiny berg of Oreana (I'm pretty sure Jose has never seen it), then we followed our usual trails back home.


25 miles, 3 1/2 hours, and we trotted most of it; the horses were fresh, we humans were not cold or wind wimps; and we discovered a new little trail and an overall great loop: the CAMWHAB trail:

Carol
And
Merri
Wild
Horse
Almost
Butte.


Jose pinning his ears at his cousin Justy.

Here's to Bromance

Thursday April 7 2011

While some things have changed, not much has really changed since Tex (now named Ted, but Stormy still calls him Tex) arrived on the Owyhee scene a year ago.

As we saw in BFFs and The Bromance Continues and Mutt and Jeff, Stormy and Tex still continue to be Best Buds.

Tex doesn't worry so much when Stormy goes off on a rare ride, and Stormy just eats while Tex is away on a trail ride learning to be an endurance horse, but when they're back in the same pasture, Tex is never far from Stormy's side.

Maybe it's their shared sports background (the racetrack) that makes this Bromance work. Maybe they were together in a former life. Or maybe they were just meant to be together in this one.

[Slide show here]

'Toons: Owyhee Riding Wimps

Tuesday April 5 2011

The stars in the universe often have to be aligned just right for all of us to agree on the perfect weather for riding.

Steph doesn't like the cold. Carol doesn't like the rain. I don't like the heat. Or the wind. Amazingly, these excuses can all happen on the same day!

Meanwhile the horses get fat and fatter waiting for us to figure it out...