riding partner problems....

[Dakoiah@aol.com]

As many of you have read, and assumed because I'm on this list, i am 
conditioning my Paso for endurance riding.  I hope by fall to have both of us 
ready for a 25 mile ride (he's the easy part....it's convincing me to keep 
going to the gym and shaping up that is hard).  I wanted to ask, however, how 
the rest of you handle riding with other people, especially friends.  

Let me explain.  My paso will be six this month.  i have been off of him for 
a month due to knee surgery.  I started his riding up again two weeks ago, 
and we are doing long slow distance and ring work to get both of us legged 
up. In our neighborhood we have an 11 mile loop down some quiet roads that we 
often ride.  Alpine is fit enough to do that loop in about 2.5 
hours...basically walk/slow corto work.  

I went riding on Wed around the loop with my roommates, one on her 
thorougbred mare, and the other on a friends running quarter stud.  We were 
doing a slow canter when my roommates looked at each other and took off in a 
dead gallop.  Alpine, being a horse, went after them.  

You need to keep in mind, not only is my horse not fit enough to run like 
that, but I don't want him too.  I have never run him, he doesn't know how, 
and I'll be darned if he learns.  Not to mention, I didn't start riding until 
I was 19, and I have a healthy dose of running phobia.(..couldn't be that 
every time I have run, I've come off........) My roommates both know this.  
Very well.  They also have been around horses enough to know that if two in a 
group run, the third one will too, no matter what it's rider says to the 
contrary.  I have told them more than once, if they want to run, to tell me 
and I won't go with them.  

To make a long story slightly shorter, I now have  a lame horse.  During that 
run, he hit a bottle and the resulting broken glass cut his coronet band.  
It's not horrid, but enough to swell and put him off on that foot.  My 
roommates comments to me was, "I'm sorry, I didn't think alpine would do 
that."  that's the problem I guess....they didn't think.

So my question is, are any of you endurance riders who don't mind the lsd 
part of conditioning living in Jacksonville, fl?????  I need riding partners 
who share my interests, not just get on and run a couple times a week.  That 
way, I don't have to be angry at my roommates or go to the barn three times a 
day to cold hose a foot.  

thanks for letting me vent....i feel slightly better now!
Juli Bechard
and Alpine (owie, owie, owie.  I DO NOT like you messing with my owie 
foot!!!!)