picket lines

[Lucy C Trumbull <elsie@calweb.com>]

With all this talk about picket lines being the
safest way to go, I'm sorry to have to come up
with a bad picket line story (that's the trouble
with this sport - for every "this is a safe thing
to do" story, there'll be 20 people who's cousin's
friend's auntie got killed doing it....)

The guy who runs the barn where I board regularly
takes him horses on hunting trips every year. They
ride out into the middle of nowhere in the woods,
fix up a picket line, and then go off an do their
hunting thing.

This year, he left his steady horse Lala tied up like
this. As I understand it, Lala is a sensible horse,
is used to being on a picket line and not prone to
panicking... well, Lala somehow managed to truss himself
up like a chicken and was in a very bad state, with many
rope cuts, by the time they returned. 

I have no idea how this happened - whether the picket line
was incorrectly set up, the horse was allowed too close
to the tree (I think a tree was involved somewhere in
there), whatever. I imagine the guy has been doing this
for years and years and this is the first time he'd had
problems.

So, with this in mind - be careful what you do, use your
imagination extra-hard to think up creative ways your
horse will hurt himself (afterall, you know that he will
spend that quiet time, not munching innocently on hay, 
but scheming to himself), and keep an eye on them.


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Lucy Chaplin Trumbull - elsie@calweb.com
Displaced English person in Sacramento, CA

http://www.calweb.com/~trouble
http://www.calweb.com/~elsie
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