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!