Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Kari wrote:
> So we will be going to Hopkins Creek next weekend. (We'll be the ones with the
> noisy black/gray colt and little chestnut mare) We'll ride at our own pace and
> probably come in dead last again, but with smiles a mile wide! This is a great
> sport and we're having a blast training, riding and learning as much as
> possible from the more seasoned riders.
And.... I hope you're planning on camping kind of on the perimeter and
keeping this young fella away from other horses on trail and in camp?

The reason I ask is that I will be there with a mare that I must presume is
in heat all the time, because she *will* be if ANY boy talks sweetly to her
-- if an intact boy talks, she doesn't care what he says nor at what volume.
I correct my horse for vocalizing in camp, or at least redirect her
attention, and wish others would do the same -- no one wants to hear it from
any gender and it's just not necessary. I'm not a big fan at all of
stallions that talk. If he vocalizes, something needs to be done about it,
IMO. 

I met a group of pleasure riders on trail the other week, a man was riding a
stud without a yellow ribbon in the front of a  group of about 6 or 7, two
abreast and he was in the middle of the trail -- IOW, in the worst possible
position from my POV. The horse made that come hither "heh-heh" sound and my
mare *tried* to swing her ass towards him. Had he been silent, we would have
passed without her noticing him any more than any other horse regardless of
the strutting he was doing. I legged my mare sharply in the flank and
applied my crop to her hiney to boot her off the trail and into the woods.
The stallion rider did nothing other than coo to his horse, "oh yes, that's
a pretty mare." I then got the hell outta Dodge, hoping that I wouldn't hear
them on our heels.

OK, so I'm the one on the slutty mare and it's a real PITA (maybe there
should be some type of a way to ID a slutty mare), but as the person who
would be the one who could potentially be badly hurt should a breeding occur
when I'm mounted, please consider that I don't know and really don't care
how good of a stallion handler a person is -- a little communication goes a
long way. If you don't already, please put a yellow ribbon on your guy. I
try really hard to avoid having my mare anywhere near a stud.

As far as "you don't truly know how they're going to react until you try",
boy, do I know how that goes! My observation is it's not necessarily the
horse's bad behavior that people judge so harshly, it's the handler's
reaction to the bad behavior. Also, people tend to notice if it's an every
ride occurance or if it's once in a while.

See you at Jeannie's ride!

Deanna



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