Saturday, 13 May 2006

Sorry I didn’t post last night. It was 11:30PM when we got in from the rodeo and I was just beat. Hope you can forgive me for waiting until today to finish my trail riding story.

Let’s see. I left off at us riding to meet the trail ride since we were so late getting there. As old as my horse is now and as many years as we’ve done this thing you would think (that’s what I get for thinking!!) that this would be a “no-brainer”. Well not to him!! As the hundreds of horses ride towards us Blue starts getting nervous! He thinks they are all after him!! OMG!! He starts prancing, turning sideways, etc. (only those of you with horses might be able to picture this incident). Anyway, Vanessa, Leslie and I blend into the mass of horses and find our place. Of the 10 years we’ve been doing this I’ve never been this close to the front of the ride before. We met up with some friends and ride and visit with them. I begin to notice that everytime Vanessa gets ahead of me with her horse Valentine (which is my horse’s best bud) Blue starts freaking out. Doing all that stuff I mentioned up above, prancing, throwing his head, turning sides, backing up!! But if I rode ahead of her he was fine.

I brought my camera to take pictures (of course) and (of course) I wanted some of me! I tried giving the camera to Vanessa. She rides ahead of us (bad idea) to try to get a picture and my “wonderful horse that I love with all my heart” goes psycho! I am getting totally frustrated and embarrassed because I am being the very person I always want to avoid at one of these events!!! I guess I must have made some pretty harsh judgements against some people about not being able to “control” their horse because I was finding myself in that same position!! I was wearing spurs that day and nudged him in the sides to get him to quit going sideways and backwards and he started “crow-hopping”. Now would that be great to get dumped from my horse in front of all these other riders? I don’t think so!!! For those of you who do not know what “crow-hopping” is. It’s a mini buck. The kind that relates “ I don’t like what we are doing and I’m protesting, not because I want to hurt you but to warn you how serious I am that I don’t want to do what you’re asking me!” If you have ever seen a bird hop, it’s kind of like that. I believe that’s where the term came from.

I told Vanessa just to forget it and give the camera back to me. A bit later I think “my horse isn’t all that attached to Leslie's horse, I’ll give the camera to her to take a few”. My horse may not be all that attached to Zebe (Leslie’s horse) but he does live in the same pasture as him and once again I have a fight on my hands except this time my “intelligent horse” (you do realize when I’m using positive comments about him that I’m being facetious!) decides to start backing up and he backs himself straight into a barbed wire fence! I am very fortunate that he didn’t unload me right there! I finally get him lined back out (going in the right direction) and Vanessa says “Blue’s bleeding really bad!” Oh, that’s just GREAT!!! I’m in the middle of no where with nothing to even doctor him with!! I snap back “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it!”. Bless her heart…it wasn’t her fault. I was so angry and frustrated with my steed by this point that I think I might have sold him on the spot if anyone had offered me money! I stop and dismount to see how bad it is. Thankfully I do have a water bottle with me to wash off some blood. It did really look bad as you’ll see from the photos a little later. But was able to wash enough to tell it wasn’t as bad as the blood was making it look and it was already clotting (good thing). So I get back on and continue the ride.

The ride makes a stop halfway to our destination with drinks and port-a-potties. I get a better chance to wash off a little more of the blood so he doesn’t look like I don’t care about him. If I had one I had at least a dozen people ask “did you know your horse is bleeding?” I know they are just trying to help because things can happen to our horses that we might not be aware of when we are riding them so it’s a horseman's friendly gesture to point out anything that maybe wrong. But after about the 20^th time I wanted to carry a sign that said “yes, I know my horse is bleeding”. The fact is he wasn’t bleeding anymore but they couldn’t tell that. While we were stopped we got a preview of rodeo right at the rest stop. Yep. Some guy’s horse started bucking (not just crow-hopping) and he got dumped! He was okay, the horse nearly caused some injury to some others when he took off in a sea of horses and riders on foot. One lady did get knocked down but have heard she was okay. It’s very rare to attend this event and not have at least one incident!

We arrive in Millsap around noon. This is where all the riders are feed a chuckwagon BBQ lunch with all the fixings. Vanessa and Leslie aren’t big on BBQ and this was where we planned to get out of the ride. The ride continues into Mineral Wells after lunch which is another 7 miles or so. We load up horses and head to town to eat Mexican Food at El Paseo which is close to Cat’s scrapbook store. As we sit down to eat we are at a window were we can see out and notice a DPS trooper arresting someone! Come to find out the guy who has a store next to Cat which is a tennis shoe store called “Foot Gear” had been selling drugs out of there and the narcs were there. Drugs were confiscated and the manager arrested! Actually lots of people knew that was taking place in that store. Law enforcement had been watching for sometime. Now how interesting is that?! Cat is hoping to get the guys space so she can expand her store. I hope that comes together for her.

After lunch we head home for a little siesta time! It’s 3 hours before we have to be back downtown for the parade. The parade went off without a hitch or any incidents. Afterwards because it was 5:45PM Doyle took me home so I could get to church on time since I had to lead worship. He and the girls took the horses home.

 

See our DPS escort down this small county road? Here we are still at the very front of the trail ride.

 

 

 

  

Couldn't resist taking a picture of the buffalo we saw along the way. Don't you like the brown and white horse?! He's beautiful!

 

 

 

 

 

Left to right. Preston (Leslie's brother) his horse is borrowed. He is just learning to ride. He's much better at playing golf!! Leslie is next to him on her horse Zebe and then Vanessa on her other horse Valentine (the appaloosa.)

Do you realize how hard it is to turn around from the back of a horse and take a picture?!! The down side is I'm having to shoot toward the east which it's still morning so I'm shooting into the sunlight!

 

  

Here's at least one pic before my horse went nuts. You can already tell he's trying to go sideways as Leslie and I are rubbing legs together!

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the result of my horse's stupidness!! I did not use very nice names for him that day!! Yes, I was not speaking very Christ-like! All that blood came from one little gash about the middle of his butt cheek. 

Here we are in Millsap. I was trying to find something that had the town's name on it and this building was all I saw. A train came through not long after I crossed the tracks. See Blue's ear in the bottom left of the photo?

I'll post some pics of the parade tomorrow.

Have a good one!   

  

Thursday, 11 May 2006

I promised I would tell the trail ride story so here goes. As usual I didn’t get to bed early. I think it was midnight. I heard Vanessa’s alarm at 5:15AM! UGH!! I had planned to get up around 5:50AM but I couldn’t go back to sleep so got up at 5:45AM. It didn’t take me long to get ready. Vanessa on the other hand took a shower and washed her hair. For a trail ride??!! What’s the point??!! Well, I guess when you’re young like her you have people you want to impress. I on the other hand could care less!! We leave the house at 6:15AM and arrive at the horses at 6:30AM. The trail ride started at 8AM and where we start is 20 minutes from Mineral Wells. Since the grass has been growing it has been increasing difficult to catch the horses. Wednesday morning was no exception. We were going to pen them overnight but storms were forecasted and I didn’t want to risk it getting bad and them having no shelter.

Now my horses have been feed twice a day for 10 years as we never had them at a place that was more than 10 acres. So when my horses see a bucket they generally come. The problem is that horses are herd animals and if just one of them decides to take off running they all go together! Leslie’s horse doesn’t care if you have a bucket or not. He was our problem Wednesday morning.

As Vanessa and I arrived and began hooking up the trailer we saw Leslie making her way in the pasture to catch someone! One thing I’ve learned is when catching a horse you don’t want more than one person going as they definitely know something is up then!! Just as I got the trailer hooked up Leslie comes up from the pasture with my horse who is whinnying for his buddy (Valentine). I go to meet Leslie. Bear in mind it’s now about 6:45AM and I’m not very awake yet. I should have grabbed another halter so when I got to her I could take Blue and she could go after someone else. So we both walk back to the trailer but she leaves the bucket where we met. Blue in the meantime is still whinnying for his buddy and Valentine is whinnying back. He finally heads our way but promptly stops at the bucket that has feed in it. Vanessa grabs Valentine. Now we have two out of three. Leslie heads back down in the pasture while Vanessa and I tack up. I notice Zebe coming up about halfway out of the pasture two different times but just about the time you think he’ll come the rest of the way he heads back down in the pasture. I feel for Leslie….been there done that many times. I decided to ride Blue after Zebe. My first instinct was to chase him because we were all in a hurry and frustrated by now. Then I thought better of it and knew that would only aggravate and already volatile situation. I just ride up to Zebe and he lets me get close enough on horseback I can nearly touch him. I get off Blue and he takes off (of course). Now picture this. I have on tight blue jeans and it’s a stretch for me to get my foot in the stirrup with jeans that are skin tight! Blue is 15.1 hands which calculates to 61 inches or 5ft one inch tall! A front came through making it a brisk and the excitement of what we were doing and my excitable horse and I’m thinking now that you may have gotten the picture of me trying to get my leg up high enough to get my foot in the stirrup and then raise my fat butt up that high into the saddle! Okay you can quit laughing now!! I do this a couple of times and every time Zebe turns away from me. I start praying. Cause I really need to catch this horse. I’m realizing we are running out of time to get to the trail ride on time. I choose to remain calm and ask God to help me. I decide to see if Zebe will just follow me and Blue to the trailer. Well, he does until we get nearly there and all of a sudden he decides he’s more interested in grass than following me. In the meantime, Vanessa comes charging in the pasture….thankfully not towards us but toward Leslie and picks her up to take her back to the trailer but Zebe is watching Vanessa. They get out of sight and once again I’m able to get close enough to Zebe I can rub his head and he lets me. I decided to try one more time getting off Blue to see if I can get a rein around his neck. Thankfully, my reins are attached to the bridle with snaps so they are easily removed. I remove one and put it around Zebe’s neck and walk both horses back to the trailer. It’s 7:30AM now. And we are still 15 minutes from Mineral Wells were we have to pick up Doyle to take us to the ride. I tell Leslie to just load Zebe in the trailer. She can tack up once we are there and while Doyle is checking us in.

We pickup Doyle and head to Weatherford. There is no way we are going to be able to get there by start time. Because we know the trail route we find a spot down the road where we can meet up with the rest of the group. We get unloaded, Leslie tacks up and Doyle heads to the starting point to show our horse papers and register us.

I'll continue this story tomorrow. Hope ya’ll stay tuned.

Here’s a few pics for you.

This is pretty far off but this is a view of the trail ride as me, Vanessa and Leslie ride to meet them. We are riding in the median between the divided highway 180 West looking toward the East (Weatherford).

 

 

 

 

Mine and Blue's view of the trail ride once we join them heading back to the west. We are coming up on the place where we will cross the highway to head toward Millsap on Old Millsap Road.

 

We are stopped waiting for all the riders to gather up so we don't have any straglers while crossing the highway as the state troopers stop all traffic until every rider is across.

Enough for tonight. I'll share more tomorrow!!

Have a good one!