We had a wonderful fall riding season. I took quite a few vacation days from work to simply ride. Ellen was off on most of those days, and when she wasn’t, I rode with Kevin. We still have some time left for trail riding before the river freezes, but for me, it is limited to the weekends and the few days off that I will have in November. The time change curtails my trail riding. Ellen and Kevin can ride during the day. They sure are lucky. I’ll be working in the arena. (At least I got an extra week this year before Daylight Savings ended.)
Cruiser went on his first weekend “long ride.” It is our usual weekend ride, and is about two and a half hours long. We typically do a lot of trotting and cantering. We slowed the ride down by doing less cantering and more walking for Cruise, since he hadn’t gone this far in over a year. He did great, and we had such a fine time that we decided that he will do all the long rides left in the year. Mingo will be quite pleased to go on a shorter ride when we get back. The whole time, I had Ellen coaching us. “Cruiser, slow down. Cruiser, the trail is uneven there. Cruiser, watch the rocks…” She had nothing to worry about—all went well, and Cruiser acted like he had been doing it all summer.
My little cat, Thunder, got sick this month. He went off his feed and was doing a lot of vomiting. I took him to the vet where they gave him fluid and some medicine. They couldn’t find anything seriously wrong, so that was good. It was a case of a very upset stomach. I had a few sleepless nights with him. Unfortunately, we don’t know what caused it, so we don’t know how to prevent it from happening again. Just to be safe, I switched his food to an “all natural.” Sometimes cats have an allergic reaction to preservatives. Poor cat. This was only a month from having a terrible reaction to his shots.
I’ve only had him since July, and in those few short months, he has burrowed his way deep into my heart. When he is sick, I’m just devastated. I’m so glad he is feeling better.
I’m blogging on Multiply.com—anyone else there can find me. Send me an invitation and let me know that you are from the newsletter list.
With the holidays coming along, I have to remind everyone that my books make terrific gifts. If you send me a check for two or more books, I will mail them out to you for free. They will take a few weeks to get to you, so I need to know early in order to get them to you by Christmas.
“Trail Training for the Horse and Rider” is my award-winning how-to book and a must for anyone who wants to learn more about riding and training for the trail. My new book, “Trail Horse Adventures and Advice” is for anyone who just likes to read about horses. You don’t even need to own a horse to enjoy it—just need to like horses. Perfect for a horse-crazy teen. It is the best of the first three years of my newsletter—, which started six years ago. So, even if you’ve been subscribing for a while, there is a good chance that you either never read these articles or simply forgot them entirely. I know I forgot I wrote a lot of them when I was editing them. Buy one for yourself and give another away—or give two away. I need to sell more of them to justify publishing the following three years of the newsletter. This book is also available as an e-book, but only if it is ordered directly from the publisher. My website has more information.
They are also available on Amazon, so if you are trying to round out your order to get free shipping from them, be sure to add my books to the list. The websites for Borders Books and Barnes and Noble also carry my books.
The vet came out to give Cruiser his final ultrasound early in October, and as I hoped, he told us we were now free to ride as we please. Cruiser is healed. It was a long year of healing, but it went fast. Truthfully, this is such big news that I can barely comprehend it.
In the world of bowed tendons, his was a nasty one. The swelling went all the way up above his knee, and he had severe ankle drop. His age didn’t help, either. The older the horse, the harder it is to heal a tendon injury. We figured we would do our best for him. Fortunately, the vet didn’t think that any of the new, expensive treatments were necessary. We would do this the traditional way.
The toughest part was in the very beginning during the icing and wrapping phase. I got so good at wrapping legs. Even Ellen got into the act to give me a break.
In December, we were finished wrapping, and started leading. I was so grateful to have an indoor arena with the nasty Cleveland winter weather. Ellen started leading a couple days a week, too. January’s ultrasound was an improvement. The vet said I could start riding at a walk for a half hour a day. I did it five days a week. Ellen led him on the other two days.
In March, the vet told us to keep up the good work, but he also said we could go down trail. Hurray! We rode up and down the hill twice to the river to make a half hour. I wasn’t ready to cross the water for such a short ride.
I think it was in June that the vet told us we could trot ten minutes a day, three days and then, after a while, five days a week. He also said we could do unlimited walking—we started crossing the river. In July, we had a setback. The ultrasound showed tendon hadn’t improved—and was even a little worse. We continued on the same course. In August, things got fun. I was told to gradually increase his trotting to a half hour a ride. In September, I was able to add in some cantering. And then, of course, October was the month we were set free.
From March forward, I did nearly all of Cruiser’s physical therapy on the trail. I think there were only two days that rain forced us to stay inside. While on our rides, I would count off the seconds as we trotted down the trail. After a while, I learned how long it would take to get down each section of trail, and that helped. It was frustrating when it rained a lot and I couldn’t cross the river, because I didn’t want to trot him up the hill. We would just go back and forth on the level areas. He wasn’t too thrilled with that—neither was I, but it was better than working in the indoor arena.
Most of the time, we were out by ourselves, but on special days, he would get to go with Ranger or Starry. He really liked that.
All through the healing process, Cruiser was a dream horse. For a horse that didn’t get turned out to play for a year and spent his first three months totally stall bound, I behaved beautifully. We did have a chance to move him to a better stall with a good window to look out at lots of activity, but I really think he enjoyed moving next to Starry even more. They are both playful horses—now they have someone to play with.
The importance of his physical therapy cannot be understated. The torn areas in his bowed tendon needed to fill in. Left alone, they would fill in with jumbled up fibers of scar tissue—making a weak area in his tendon—easier to re-injure. What we wanted was for the fibers to grow in as straight as possible to make a stronger tendon. To do this, the tendon needed to be used just enough, but not too much. The stretching down as he stepped would encourage good healing. Even the weight of me on his back helped—that’s why I needed to ride him at a walk in the beginning instead of just leading him.
The ultrasounds every couple of months helped us see if everything was working. Good thing—he seemed to be doing great last summer when the ultrasound told us otherwise. Without that, we would have probably increased his work and possibly hurt him. The ultrasounds took the guesswork out of it.
It certainly helped that I was using a vet that specialized in bowed tendons. My regular vet referred me to their practice. I asked him how many cases of bowed tendons they have had over the years. They keep track of all of them, and he guessed they were now over 15,000! The racehorses, jumpers and dressage horses bow their tendons early in their careers. The trail horses usually get them when they are older—like Cruiser who is now twenty.
So now, I am gradually increasing Cruiser’s trail rides. Unfortunately, we will soon be stuck in the arena, and we will have to start the conditioning all over in the spring. It is strange not to be counting when I’m trotting. I still worry—keep him away from the tougher river crossings, out of deep mud and I won’t cross the river when it is higher. That is what Mingo is for.
I have begun to ride Mingo a little less, and soon, he will be my “second horse” again. He did well over the last year, but he simply doesn’t enjoy a lot of work like Cruiser. Cruiser thrives on it. Mingo tolerates it. He prefers shorter rides and lots of attention.
Ranger’s vacation is over, now. What we discovered is that Ranger never was a naturally fast horse. He only went fast because Cruiser did—we didn’t know this. Mingo corrupted him and showed him how nice it is to go slow. Now, Ranger wants to go slow all the time. Cruiser is working on speeding him up.
So, hopefully this is the last time I will mention Cruiser’s bowed tendon. When it happened, I thought it was the end of the world, but it really wasn’t that bad. We took it one step at a time and enjoyed each improvement. Finally, we are there, and it feels great.
According to the survey on my website, the number one problem that people have with their horses on the trail is spooking. Spooking is one of those things that usually will get better in time. The more that a horse is exposed to scary things, the better he will get.
There is no amount of desensitization that will prepare you for everything you encounter on the trail. Try as you might, something new will come along. You need to be prepared for the unexpected. It is one of the things that makes trail riding so challenging.
My sister, Ellen, and I were talking about some of the strangest encounters we ever had out on the trail. I remember once, when Cruiser was about five or six, I was heading home in the evening after a really nice ride. Our trail parallels the river, and in some places, it is very close to it. We were in one of those areas, and there was a canoe going down the river. Most of the time, in our part of the park, our river is not quite deep enough in enough areas to make canoeing any fun, so this was a first for us.
Cruiser was terrified, but to get home, he had to either wait for the canoe to go downstream or pass it. The canoe was going very, very slowly, and Cruiser snorted and pranced about in frustration—he was not passing that river-dwelling monster. It took about ten minutes of waiting before the river went away from the trail enough so we could get by.
This experience helped us more than ten years later. This time, I was riding Cruiser with Ellen on Ranger. The river was on the high side—plenty high for kayaks. We were in the same general area of the trail, heading for home once again, and we saw three men in kayaks. The horses didn’t like the looks of them, so we stayed behind them as they coasted down the river. The kayakers didn’t know about the tree that fell over the water that was just about a foot above the surface. We watched as the first two boats crashed in, and the men got dumped into the water. (The third saw in time and pulled to shore.) One of the kayaks got away and headed downstream. The men were fine. Once things calmed down and we knew everything was all right, we cautiously passed them and went home.
Unusual traffic is always a problem in a busy urban area like ours. There was a time that Ellen and I were crossing a bridge to get to another part of the park that we don’t go to very often. We were riding in the sidewalk, and the traffic from the road was very heavy. As it got louder and louder, the horses started to hurry across the bridge. Right when we were nearly to the end, a Little Debbie Snack Cakes truck passed us and made a funny noise. They just about leapt off the sidewalk to the trail. What makes this incident stick in our minds so much is that there was an obscure song at the time that was playing on the radio a lot. I don’t even remember what it was, except it had one phrase in it where the singer chanted, “Little Debbie, Little Debbie.” That is what we were chanting when that truck was passing us.
Ellen was riding alone one day, and she had an encounter with a Stanley Steemer truck. The problem with it? It kept letting out steam and was going, “Psss…psss.” She had a tough time with that one.
She gets the prize for the best vehicle encounter. Once again, she was by herself. (I’m so glad I wasn’t there for this one.) She found a truck on the trail that she—it was the fish truck. It was loaded up with fish that they were stocking the river with. If that wasn’t bad enough, there was the guy with tall yellow waders walking down the trail with buckets of fish in his hands that he was dumping in the water. Ranger wanted nothing to do with this! Ellen said she was just about in the trees along the trail to try to get passed that horse-eating monster.
Winter can be a problem with snowplows, but one day, the streets were clean enough that we didn’t need to worry about them. At the time, we kept the horses at a barn that didn’t have an indoor arena and had a lousy outdoor arena, so all our good riding had to be done on the trail. The river was frozen, so we decided to go down the street to get to a different entrance to the park where we wouldn’t have to cross the river. All went well, and we had a wonderful ride in the snow, but on the way home, as we rode along the street, someone fired up a snow blower. The horses had a fit. We never did that again.
Of course, there are the miscellaneous, oddball things we find. The cross-country roller blader that was on the bridle path comes to mind. There are the people who go jogging—pushing their strollers in front of them. Leaf blowers close to the bridle trail—blowing leaves at us—is always something that makes the horses prance about. (When the workers see us, they shut off the machinery.) Construction equipment can be tough. We’ve even seen people in robes being baptized in the river. You just never know what will turn up!
Of course, there are the squirrels, chipmunks, shadows and funny-looking logs that will keep us on our toes, too. And then, there are the most mysterious horse-eating monsters of them all—those that are only visible to horse eyes—that we, with our inferior eyesight can’t see at all. Yes, those are the worst.
Looking for an inexpensive toy to keep your housecat happy? Take a paper towel tube, crimp one of the ends down and toss a half a dozen pieces of dry cat food in it. Thunder is always batting his tube around so he can get the cat food out. Of course, it would be a whole lot easier for him to go to his cat food dish and eat his food there, but he says it is just not the same.
I put some food in it each morning before I go to work.
Surprisingly, our dog, Pollie usually leaves his tube alone. Every now and then, I will hear her attacking it, too. She prefers tearing it open. Dogs need to have fun, too.le to keep up with our high standards of service, we need a little more time. Please stop by again. Thank you for your interest!
If you like my newsletter, you will love my books. “Trail Training for the Horse and Rider” is a how-to book full of terrific advice for all trail riders. It is $19.95 plus shipping and handling. The publisher accepts Mastercard, VISA, checks and money orders. Go to my website, click on buy the book, and it will direct you to their website. They also have other horse books and tons of dog booksMy new book, “Trail Horse Adventures and Advice” is the best of the first 3 years of my newsletter. It is available as a paperback book for $14.95 + shipping or as an e-book for $9.95. My website has a link to my other publisher where you can read the first 3 chapters for free and buy the book.
If you are interested in an autographed copy, send me e-mail, and I will tell you where to send the check. (I don’t accept credit cards.) It will cost the same. if you buy 2 books from me, and you don’t mind me shipping them Media Mail—which cold take a couple weeks, I will ship them for free.
Anyone who is interested in contributing to this newsletter is welcome to e-mail me at judiemail@yahoo.com A newsletter that is free cannot afford to pay anyone for their contributions, of course, but then again, I don’t get paid either. It is the joy of sharing that counts.
Feel free to forward my newsletter to anyone you like and encourage them to sign up for it.
