Trail Courtesy

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

K S SWIGART katswig@earthlink.net

Amber said:

>Karen Sullivan wrote:
>
>> Then, as many of you know, the trail goes right by the shooting range.  In
>> the past, the horses hear the shots in advance and go by it, no problem
>> (though I would hate to be on a really green, idiot horse)  THIS year, they
>> stopped shooting WHILE they approached, then ALL the shooters let loose with
>> firing (some automatic), exactly timed for when we passed by.  Nice guys,
>> huh?
>
>Excuuuuse me, but what the hell is the matter with people????  This just makes
>me furious.

It shouldn't.  These shooters probably thought they were being 
polite and considerate.  They were probably told, "There are
going to be a bunch of horses going by today, and they might be 
startled by the gunfire so when you see them coming, it would 
be polite to stop shooting and wait until they have passed 
before resuming."

And that is just what they thought they were doing.  It is 
beyond me why people are so quick to think that other people 
are motivated by ill intent.  In my experience, almost nobody
is.

And certainly shooters at a shooting range would not collude to
deliberately startle horses.  Shooters are another one of those
minorities who generally understand that if they want to be able
to continue in their hobby, deliberately pissing off non-participants
wouldn't be the best way to go about it.

Horse people who suggest that horse riders (or dog owners, or 
whoever) get "an attitude" would do well to consider this.  Minority
hobbyist with "an attitude" are just inviting the majority to stomp
them out.  

There may be rare individual shooters who might, without
really thinking about the consequences, think it would be funny 
to deliberately startle horses with gunfire, but I cannot even 
fathom a whole crowd of them at an official shooting range 
deciding this together.

Just as there are individual dog owners, horse owners, mountain
bikers, and dirt bike riders who seem willing to antagonize the 
general population--although even these people are generally 
thoughtless rather than deliberately malicious.

If ride management doesn't want the same thing to happen again
at this endurance ride, it can go to the shooting range operators
and say, "We appreciate the effort your shooters made in trying
to not startle the horses with gunfire, but actually it would
be better if ________."  And discuss the best way for the shooters
and the horses to share the area.  

This goes for sharing with ALL the users of the area: shooters, 
horses, mountain bikes, dirt bikes, cars, trucks, and pedestrians
to name just a few.  It is unreasonable for me as a horse rider
to expect non-horse people to understand the idiosyncracies of 
horses.  Most people's experience with horses is what they see
in the movies...and the things they see horses do in the movies
are nothing like the way real horses that are only half-broke 
handled by people with a great deal less skill than movie 
wrangles behave...and besides, they don't get to see ANY of the
equine behaviour that gets left on the cutting room floor. :)

What they do get to see is Arnold Schwartznegger galloping a horse
down city streets in heavy traffic chasing a motorcycle through 
hotel lobbies and riding in an elevator.  Why SHOULDN'T horses be 
able to handle a little gunfire...or exhaust noise from a dirt bike?

If we want people to behave differently in their hobbies when 
horses are around, it is up to us to try to POLITELY inform them that
we really don't have very much control over our horses and to
ask them to be understanding of our ineptitude, rather than 
berating them for not knowing just how flighty horses can be.  Most
people, if given the opportunity, will try to be considerate, 
and it is a rare individual, indeed, who will deliberately do 
something that they have POLITELY been asked not to.  

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s.  Many of them might then, quite reasonably, ask why we are
foolish enough to get on a thousand pound animal that can be so
unpredictable and go out in public with it. :)  And, BTW, there are
some horse riders who feel the same way...and won't take their
horses out of the controlled environment of an arena--and think
that trail riders are crazy.

What I accept is that when I take my horses out into the big, wide
world, that I am taking them to a place where there may be 
horse eating monsters (and us horse people haven't even figured
out what all those things are....why should non-horse people be
born knowing it).  And it is MY responsiblity to ensure both
the horse's and my own safety, not to depend on strangers to 
do it for me.  And that includes being prepared for encountering
cars on roads, bikes on bike paths, shooters at shooting 
ranges (and Navy Jets going supersonic in the Panamint Valley :)).  
And if I am not prepared for that, I can stay in the arena.