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We have to ride down the
side of the road if we want to see something other than the arena. For the
most part she does great, passes the WalMart bags caught in the barb wire
blowing in the wind, dogs, tractors, motor cycles, bicycles, cars, trucks,
etc. none of these bother her, but the guy with the big hay field was baling
round bales, and my god, you'd have thought she never sees them 6 months of the
year. We did manage to get by all those scary round bales to come
to.....the water with a trash bag in it. I about fell off laughing at
her. It may not be the 'correct' thing to do but I'll get off and lead
past any day. The alternative is being dumped in the road and possibly
being run over or being tossed into the barb wire fence.
This sounds like my average trail ride. We go past the "dumps", bed
springs, mattresses, refrigerators , washer, dryers, couches, . Then we have
the dirt bikes and four wheelers,(Rascals so used to me getting him off the
trail when we hear one coming, that he anticipates.He starts heading for
the woods and I start to rein him back, going "what are your doing?", then I
hear it, Oh, his hearing is better than mine.)Then we have the hunters in fall
and winter and the average gun practice inthe summer. My neighbor has a gun
range and practices regularly. Then we had the dumped tent in the trail
one day.After getting him past it , I finally decided after the amount of time
it took to get off and move it 5 feet.(there is a dropoff on the other side.
Then we have the leaping deer, the turkey flocks. . . My kids occasionally
bring their bikes. And my "hunter, eventer" daughter, wonders why I don'e ride
in an english all purpose saddle. But. . . there was the light blue
trash bag. We'd passed it 50 times last fall. This year after a layoff, won't
pass it, I tried the circles getting closer thing(john Lyons) but this isn't
the west(where you have plenty of space), this is Georgia logging trails and
power easements very hilly. Finally for lack of time I did what is the last
resort . Get off and lead him. He will go with me onthe ground like a puppy,
but not mounted, not pass that blue trash bag. Like he hadn't seen a trash bag
before,(but it was light blue.)
Well the price was right, free. Anyone want to despook your horse. I''ll
charge .1.50$ to dome ride at my place on a Saturday late afternoon, did I
mention the downed trees, 3 creeks to cross, overhanging branches..
.
Laurie and Rascal (with the bald spots still)
----- Original Message -----
From: C.
Eyler
Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2002 8:12
PM
To: Ridecamp
Subject: [RC] Bombproofing clinic
Took my gelding on Saturday to a bombproofing clinic run by
two mounted cops
from the Washington D.C. Park Police. Verrrry
interesting.
One of the first things they had us do was to move
around the arena with the
horses very close together. Told us we
should be almost touching stirrups
when side by side, and we were to
leave very little space in between one
horse's rump and another's
nose. (Couldn't help remembering the discussion
here on Ridecamp
about leaving a safe space between horses.) The point
being to
desensitize our horses to close contact with one another.
We left a
bit more space when taking them over mattresses, past road
flares,
through paths of plastic bottles, a curtain of styrofoam noodles,
and a
gauntlet of waving mylar balloons, etc., but we sure were close
together
when milling around the smoke bombs, gradually getting each of
our horses
closer to the source.
I did notice that we left a bit
of space between the horses while the
gunfire was going off. No
problem when the gun was fired form the opposite
end of the arena, but my
guy got a *bit* more reactive when the cop firing
the gun moved
closer. Oooh, that was
fun.
Cindy
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