Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. We had rain, high rivers, snow and frozen ground, but we got out on the trail on all four days of our long weekend. That alone is enough for a couple horse-crazy women to be thankful for!
I wrote an article for the Long Rider’s Guild about the Anti-Horse Thief Association. Back in the early days of our country, horse thieves were a real problem. To combat this, a group of people got together to catch the horse thieves. The organization grew to 50,000 members. To read my article “ The Anti-Horse Thief Association—Protect the Innocent; Bring the Guilty to Justice” go to www.lrgaf.org/articles/ahta.htm
My next assignment, and this is going to be a tough one, is to find out what happened to a group of Morgans that were exported to China—and disappeared. If any of you know anything about this, (I know this is a real long shot, but I have to try) please contact me.
Don’t forget to ask for my books for Christmas and give them out as gifts!
Book Review: Between the Desert and the Deep Blue Sea by Gill Suttle
Ever want to ride somewhere new, see things you’ve never seen before and experience a new culture? Instead of just traveling on horseback on our neighborhood trails, ever want to go to a different park, forest or even a different state? How about a different country? How about Syria?
I’m sure that’s about the last place you would have picked, but that’s just where Gill Suttle went. Back in 1978, on a borrowed Arabian stallion, she rode across Syria –and she did it all by herself—a British woman--alone. To make things more complicated, she didn’t know the language well enough with all the different dialects that she encountered to communicate easily with the local people. If that didn’t make things tough enough, she had to find her route with inadequate maps—apparently, good maps just weren’t available.
Her book is a fascinating account of a different culture in a country steeped in history so deep that those of us in a young country like the United States have trouble comprehending. I’m talking Crusades, Romans, Assassins and early Christian history.
She met Muslims (Sunnis and Shi’ites), Christians and these mysterious people called Alawis—and they all lived peacefully together. She visited castles that sounded so interesting that I just had to go on the Internet to see what they looked like, and wow, were they magnificent. She rode up mountains, through forests and deserts and busy, busy cities. It was in the cities that she had the toughest times, for the traffic was horrendous.
The parts I liked the best were when she would meet new people. Almost as a rule, they were incredibly kind and generous—sometimes almost to a fault. They welcomed a foreign woman into their homes with enthusiasm. Each visit told me a little more about a people that are supposed to be one step away from the “Axis of Evil.” I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Know thy enemy.” These people—our enemies? It was just a reminder that a disagreement between governments doesn’t mean we should hold it against the people they represent.
The only thing that disappointed me about this book is that I wish there were more photos of her horse.
“Between the Desert and the Deep Blue Sea” opened my eyes to a country that I knew so very little about and now wish to know more. If you are looking for some interesting reading to get you through the long winter and you want to learn a little about an unknown country, I highly recommend this book.
Reading “Between the Desert and the Deep Blue Sea” left me with the need to have an adventure. Ellen and I only ride the local trails. I was telling her how someday, we should do something similar, and just take off with our horses and ride. We needed to have new challenges. We needed an adventure.
We don’t have a horse trailer, so we have little choice, it’s the same trails over and over except…
There is the Wallace Lake Ride. When we only want to go on a short ride, we can ride about a half hour from home in one direction, and then we get to a point where we can’t go any further without a lot of difficulty. It can be done, but we don’t do it very often. In fact, it had been at least two years since the last time we tried it, since we didn’t get a chance to ride there before Cruiser got hurt last year. We did try it with Mingo, but we didn’t get further than five minutes down the trail. He didn’t like the way it looked, and Ranger said there was no way he was going to do it without Cruiser to follow. We gave up that idea and decided to wait until Cruiser got a clean bill of health.
Here is what we have to face. First of all, the bridle trail disappears, and we have to ride on the All Purpose Trail. It is about 12 feet wide, and it is mostly used by people on bikes. Almost immediately, it is funneled under a railroad bridge. When I say funneled, I mean funneled. On one side, there is a chain link fence overlooking a sheer drop to the river below. On the other side, is a concrete barrier that is about 4 feet high that separates us from the road—and it can be a very busy road. That is where Mingo said no way. He felt trapped.
Shortly down the trail, we have to ride under the low railroad bridges. Here the fence disappears and is replaced by the concrete sloping arch of the bridge. The traffic sounds for the road are twice as loud under the bridge, and often, there are trains overhead. We try to time going under the bridges when there is a break in the train traffic. We get out of that bridge for just a couple of minutes, only to go under a second bridge that is very similar.
After that, we have a brief break where we just ride along on the All Purpose Trail for a few minutes. It gives us a chance to catch our breaths for the worst part. We have to cross a very, very busy 4-lane road with lots of scary trucks. We get to cross at the light, but it is a long light to stand at with nervous horses. We have to be fairly close to the road to press the button to get the signal, too. Yikes. I remember one time when we stood there for 5 minutes waiting for the signal to work. Finally, we gave up—figuring it was broken and crossed when the car traffic got their signal. Needless to say, Ellen and I lead the horses through all this.
Once we cross the street, it still is a bit challenging. We no longer have to ride on the All Purpose Trail, but we do have to ride literally right next to it for about a half mile. This is only a problem if a bike surprises us flying down the trail. Our horses are very used to bikes, so we don’t worry too much about it. There is another scary-looking bridge that we ride under, but oddly, they are never frightened of this one.
We then get to a point where we lose our trail, again. This time, we ride the All Purpose Trail with the street right next to us on one side and a rock wall on the other. We have to ride under two more noisy bridges—which is bad enough, but between the bridges, overhead on top of the rock wall, is the Giant Eagle loading dock. We never know what funny noises will come from up there.
Finally, we get to a regular trail, sort of. It leads through a very active, wide-open, highly used and civilized area of the park. For a couple of miles, the trail is basically the side of the road. Sometimes, we can’t even see where the trail is. The traffic on the street can be very fast and noisy, and there are people all around on nice days.
We picked this day since it was far from a nice day. Actually, it was a typical Cleveland November day. The temperatures were in the 40’s, it was very cloudy and it looked like it could rain any moment. It was a perfect day for a Wallace Lake Ride. Even better, we had recently had our shoes pulled, and barefoot horses have better traction on pavement than ordinary horseshoes.
I must say, all went beautifully on the way out. We didn’t even have to wait at the light for very long. This is not a high-speed trail, but one that we do a lot of walking and intersperse it with trotting. We turned around when we got to the river crossing. Actually, this is when the trail turns back into a normal bridle trail, but we didn’t want to be out for three hours, and parts of the trail are very rocky for our newly barefoot horses.
As soon as we turned around, the horses transformed. We expected they would be hyper, since we would be going home, and we haven’t been on this ride for so long. Ranger was prancing, and Cruiser was doing his stepping pace to keep up. This is the first time since he bowed his tendon that he did it for more than a few strides. He was excited. We got to a good section of trail, and Ellen suggested trotting. We did for about fifty feet, and we felt them getting excited. She was in the lead and thought we should walk. I thought so, too, but Cruiser had a different idea. He kept trotting, passing Ranger, for another fifty feet. That is when we decided we would be safer just walking back until we got to familiar trails.
They did quite well after that until we got to the Giant Eagle store. I don’t know what they were doing up there, but they made all kinds of noises. Both horses wanted to high-tail it out of there, but don’t forget, we were on the All Purpose Trail at that part of the trail. They danced and pranced until we got past the store and under the next bridge. We all sighed, and Ellen and I were both relieved the horses didn’t have horseshoes.
All went well until we got to the busy road. Ellen led Ranger up to the button and pressed it. We waited for what seemed an hour, but it was only a few minutes. Ranger was closer to the street than we were, and with each passing car, he got more nervous—and then I saw the bus coming down the street. Ranger really danced, and Ellen circled him away. Mercifully, the light changed right after that. She led Ranger as he slowly jogged by her side. He looked like he grew a half foot. Cruiser just sauntered across the street. He has crossed busy streets many times in his life before Ellen ever got Ranger, so he deals with traffic much better than Range.
We headed down the All Purpose Trail towards the bridges. We had some huge trucks pass us on the road, but I would just yell to Ellen, “Large truck. Turn around.” We would turn the horses to face the vehicles, and they were just fine.
Ranger was in such a hurry. I thought he looked so cute, but Ellen was too busy holding on to him to appreciate his appearance. He pranced about. There was one train on the bridge and another coming. We waited a bit for the first one to pass because it was making really scary noises. We then hurried the guys under before the next train arrived. Once we made it to the other side, we were so pleased with ourselves. We took our usual trail home, and talked the whole way about how great a ride it was.
Because it was a great ride. We finally got to go somewhere different and challenged ourselves. Rather that going on the same old trail where we know every single step of the way, we got to see less familiar sights. The horses were excited and a bit more difficult, but they did do everything they needed to do. At no time did they refuse. Sure they rushed a little, but that only meant that we did less trotting and more walking—but it was fast walking.
We don’t know if we will have the kind of weather to do this again, yet this year. Hopefully, we will have another chance. I told Ellen we need to do this type of ride, because someday, we will have young horses, and all the rides will be like this for a while. We are getting quite spoiled with Ranger and Cruiser. They are great horses.
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.
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