Re: RC: Bikes, children, and other hazards

[Rick Crites <rdcrites@altavista.com>]

Glad to have you back with us.

Nan

On Fri, 16 June 2000, "Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" wrote:

> 
> First, I want to thank everyone for their messages last week. It really
> meant a lot. I've been unbelievably fortunate in my life to be surrounded by
> such great friends as well as my husband's enormous family, who are also an
> immense support. Having gotten through the preliminary sorting out of his
> affairs, I now have some time to relax a bit and I found that I was needing
> the lovely distraction of mail again. Got back to see the tail end of the
> hazard discussion and I had to laugh. A few days ago, I came in from
> meetings with business people and my kids met me at the door with my riding
> clothes and told me to get to the stable immediately and not come back for
> at least 3 hours!
> 
> Needless to say, I obeyed willingly and I'm now working my time to include
> regular horse time. I've had my horses at a riding club with arenas and
> access to the desert for years, but when Dory broke her sesamoid I moved her
> to a nearby farm stable that had some great small rehab paddocks. (No room
> to run around, but she could watch everything going on) And now we are
> riding for the next six months or so on the trails and dirt roads among the
> farms. "Farms" here are tiny plots of land with sheds made of old cornstalks
> for the water buffalo and mud brick (or if you're rich) concrete block
> houses that always have goats and chickens running in and out. School is out
> now so there are a million children running around (whenever they can escape
> mom and dad) catching minnows in irrigation ditches ...popping up suddenly
> from the reeds... flying homemade kites and herding all sorts of wonderful
> animals. On any given ride we have to walk past at least 25 buffalo, 40
> donkeys, a few camels, tractors, dump trucks, pick ups, bicycles, motor
> bikes, donkey and horse carts, soccer matches, piles of burning trash,
> flocks of geese, ducks, sheep and goats. Oh, yeah, I forgot all the farm
> dogs. Anyone want bombproof horses? I've got as close as they come. BUT,
> yesterday as we were walking along Dory suddenly saw a baby donkey that had
> been lying in the long grass in the sun next to a canal raise its head and
> she did one of the largest sidesteps I've ever seen. Oddly enough the little
> 4 yr old stallion who was walking right next to us didn't even raise an
> equine eyebrow. Go figure. No one is ever bombproof completely, but I've
> always found that if I assumed something wasn't a problem, my horses assume
> the same, and I've made it a point that whenever I saw something weird, we
> went to take a look. A lot of people thought I was nuts, but now they see
> the results. Arabs, at least here, have incredible curiousity, so it makes
> sense to use it and let them learn to use it constructively rather than by
> inventing monsters. There are enough real monsters out there that they might
> as well learn that the world on the whole is a friendly place.
> 
> Wow. You can't tell much that I've had a week off from talking horses.
> 
> Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
> Cairo, Egypt
> gabbani@starnet.com.eg
> 
> 
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