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Re: Bikes, children, and other hazards



Aw Maryanne,  so glad that you are back.  My condolences to you and your
family.  My heart cried for you.  I hope all will be well for you and yours
in good time.   The old saying, I believe by Will Rogers,  "the outside of a
horse is good for the inside of a man" is so true.  Even more so for a
woman.  Your children must have read it somewhere and taken it to heart.
Wise children you have there.  :-)   Gesa Brinks


-----Original Message-----
From: Maryanne Stroud Gabbani <gabbani@starnet.com.eg>
To: Ridecamp@endurance.net <Ridecamp@endurance.net>
Date: Friday, June 16, 2000 11:51 PM
Subject: RC: Bikes, children, and other hazards


>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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