My excellent ride weekend/rolling horse problems

Okay, this is a NATRC story, but you'all can just be nice, read on, and you might like it anyway! My next door neighbors and good friends have been putting on a NATRC ride at Chino Hills state park a few times over the years. Last year we had a lousy turnout, but this weekend we had a pretty good turn out, over 60 riders. We had a substantial number of first time riders, and three juniors, and we wanted to encourage them to come to rides (of any sort) because it is good to grow the sport, right? The ride distances were about 20 miles for Novice, about 35 for CP's, and about 50miles or so for Opens

Ray andSue, the ride managers, had a great idea of giving the first time riders a small award at the Friday night briefing. Sue had talked to all of them before the ride, and knew a little story about them, so she called them up, gave them their "welcome award" and told everyone their name and a little about them. We also had a birthday cake and singing for one of the kid volunteers. We have had first time riders in the past, who show up, are too shy to meet anyone, don't win anything, feel discouraged, and then just blow it off, never to be seen again. She also had "breed awards", basically a bucket of carrots for every type of horse there, some of whom there were only one. (POA, Morgan, Tenn. Walker, peruvian, Mustang, Grade, Arab etc.) They had nice high point awards for the open and junior horses, collapsable saddle racks.

The quality of the horses at this ride was excellent, very nice group of animals. We had a rider who had done a "round-up" ride thing, and she told me she was very pleased with the health and obvious care that the horses were recieving, and how different it was from her previous experience. She'll be back. See, many of these people will funnel over to AERC at some point too, so it's nice that they are getting started.

This year I had the priviledge of riding one of our NATRC judges' horses. Because we couldn't compete in a ride she was judging, I rode drag with another friend, which is a nice way to help my friends with their ride anyway. This mare is a lovely, elegant CMK, (Gulastra, Raffles, Azraff etc) bred mare, gorgeous metallic bay. She was small, but moved out very well, in fact she was consistently walking faster up and down hills than my 16 hand Appy companion. And she never had to hustle to keep up with the big guy. We went up one very steep grade into a PR Check and had a heart rate of 52 upon arrival, she had never had a P&R check before.. This was her very first ride, and I liked going easy with her so she could get the schooling and experience. A very cool horse indeed.

This year there were Bi-plane flyovers, but nobody got buzzed this year, thank you. We had a large number of bicyclists, who have been well educated in trail courtesy and we didn't have a single problem. At one point we were on a single track "cliff" and some bikes were coming at us, and I got very nervous on my new mount, but she was good, and the bikers got off and insisted on climbing up the hill above the trail. And I prayed,"Don't get scared and spook off the cliff" so she was fine. The bikers thought she may fall off the cliff and land on them. Duh, she woulda spooked uphill away from them, but we just kept going and let it go at that. There was an entire camp of boyscout troups , with balloons, and flags and banners, but no mishaps there. We rode through one campground and were assaulted by a puppy, and since we were riding drag and could just mess around, we stopped, so the owner could "get that dog horse broke". That happened very fast. They had a little boy with them that really had to look under the horses feet, and had us lift all the feet so he could have a look at their shoes. He definitely had the horse gene! The funny thing was that all the people we encountered really liked the looks of the Appy, who I personally think is not the prettiest thing on God's green earth, but nobody looked at the fantastic typey Arab. Oh well, I guess they admired his spots a lot.. It was funny though, a couple bikers passed us pretty fast, and then one of them said to his friend, "Hey, we better slow down around horses! Did you see how worried that horse looked? Did you see his eyes??" It was funny because he has really bad eyes and eyesight and lots of sclera, and his eyelids kinda roll out, and they were red from bugs bothering him so much, and bloodshot. Poor guy. But he was a very good trooper and a good trail horse. We were laughing all day about that biker.

One of the obstacles that the judge set up (I think it was the only un-natural obstacle) was a 3 foot plastic alligator on the trail. I knew about it ahead of time, but didn't get to see it. Apparently it scared a biker real bad! Ha Ha, alligators in Southern California! And I hear one of the riders actually shot it. That would probably be a point off, I imagine. Next year maybe we can use Advil Gnomes.

One of the senior horses got down to roll after the ride. A lot of riders lead their horses around, and the horses roll on the lead rope. None of my horses would ever do that, and I kinda worried about grinding dirt into their back if I was gonna ride again, so I never pursued it. I don't know how to train a horse to lay and roll in hand. Anyway, the senior citizen horse, went into a severe muscle cramp thing, it wasn't a colic, and the ride vet had to treat him right away. We then got into a discussion about whether letting horses roll at rides may screw their muscles up if they are fatigued. There was no consensus of opinion. Anyone had any experiences with that?

Well we all ate tons of good food, there was excellent food(BBQ Ribs, Chicken, Baked Potato bar, birthday cake etc) in abundance. Maybe if we have the ride next year, some of you Southern Calif/Arizona (we had those) riders may come, and check it out. It's actually a nice pre-Tevis conditioner, little threat of injury, lots of very tough hill climbs, a little heat, great scenery and excellent food. Yumm!

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