The Cowboy Way
This is a tale of a fund raiser gone wrong...
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I love to tell this tale, my friend will kill me if she finds out, but she can do that later. Now I have not changed any names to protect Bev or myself, but time might have exaggerated the situations a bit in my mind. This ride took place on April 15, 2000.
First the background on my horse...
I bought Milady in November of 1999 and she had been mostly everything that I have ever wanted in a horse. She is a deep black with three whites socks and a full blaze, stands over 18 hands, and has PERFECT ground manners. As an 8-year-old Shire she makes a commanding presence. Now on training she did lack some. In a nice soft snaffle, she has a very soft mouth. The only problem is that on occasion she gets spooked and my horse who is normally the typical stereotyped plodding draft horse turns into a HUGE pile of muscles that gallops down the road at break neck speeds with her tongue over the bit.
Now as anyone knows this is not fun and it only took twice for me, who rides Western, to inform my English trained horse that we were not going to do that any more and that she would learn to neck rein in a mechanical hackamore so I could have some BRAKES!!! This change was done in March of 2000.
Now this horse did not like change and had a real problem with going from close contact on the bit to the slack rein that I prefer to ride with. A real problem in fact. Add to this that as a draft is hard to find a saddle that fits right, and so I was riding only bareback.
Now the background on Bev's horse...
Rayna, a 4-year-old Shire standing just 18 hands even, was bought from Texas in Dec of 2000. She had never had any weight on her back, but had a lot of groundwork. Her knees had been x-rayed and they were closed so riding her was good.
Bev started her under saddle and even though Ray is a bit high strung, she was great. Never a buck, never an attempt to rid herself of her rider. In fact we were riding down the side of a busy rode after the third time with Bev on her back. Ray is a really good baby.
Bev wanted the best training for Ray so she found a very good trainer to start working with Ray, though the trainer had to free up her schedule a bit so by the start of April Ray was sporting a new pair of shoes, Bev had ridden her a dozen or two times, and the new trainer had ridden her maybe 5 times. Ray was, shall we say, a bit green. However, where Milady goes Ray goes so we were usually safe. Please note that Ray is an even harder fit for a saddle and so was in a bareback pad and breast collar.
Now for the main event...
A somewhat local charity had a sponsored ride that Bev thought would be wonderful experience for our horses and would be great fun with better scenery then were we usually ride. Now, I had my doubts, but it did not exactly take major arm-twisting to get me to go for a trail ride, even if it was 25 miles long and two hours drive away. So we hired a nice gentleman to haul us and off we went.
Now I will never forget the look on all of those people's faces as we pull up in this trailer that reads Arabian Affair and then unload two Shires that both are over 18 hands. The checking in and tacking up all went just fine, and within an hour we started out on this trail. For supplies we left all liquids in the truck that would not be coming back until night to pick us up, and I had an emergency kit and 10lbs of apples in saddle bags sitting in front of me on her withers. Now my horse is about the slowest walking horse in the universe, everyone was constantly passing us. I think that we must have told about 500 people that there were not Clydes, they are Shires.
Now Milady was doing ok for about the first mile. After that we came to a down hill stretch that had soft loamy footing. We went down that hill at an uncontrolled trot. When we finally got Milady to stop, which also stopped Ray. Bev who HATES mechanical hackamores as inhumane and cruel, got off and tightened Milady's chin strap to give me more leverage. After we got her back on her horse (Not an easy ordeal when the horse is green, nervous, bareback, and 18 hands), we kept going. Milady then proved that she had more tricks up her sleeves. For the next several miles Milady would, without warning, dart off of the trail. Up hill, down hill, into four-foot high brush, and darn near off of cliffs, fun stuff. And of course, where Milady goes, Ray follows... This is when we really figured out that I had NO control over my horse at all.
Now we had gone maybe 3 or 4 miles out of 25. My nerves were totally shot, I am pretty sure that Bev was feeling less then confident, and we came to a T in the road. There were two signs. One said "Cowboy Way" with an arrow to the left; the other said "City Slickers" and pointed to the right... I do not think that we hesitated for more then a few seconds before heading off to the right. We were feeling very sure that we needed the easiest route and "City Slickers" was the way for us. About 15 feet later, the trail took a VERY sudden thinning and decent. It wound down to the edge of a small river after dropping about 10 feet in height in about the same distance in length. VERY steep.
Now, here in the Pacific Northwest we have really great evergreens everywhere. At this spot the trees on the road next to us, as we stared down at the trail, over hung and turned the river almost black in their shade. In fact the river pooled at this spot and the surface was almost glass like in the dark under those trees.
I went first. Now Milady went down the trail with some protest, but she went down. At the edge of the water she dipped one toe in the water, saw a million Shire eating monsters in the water, reared strait up (now remember that I was bareback with a set of saddlebags balanced in front of me...) put her front hooves on the bank near Ray and lunged up the bank. I am always surprised at how much raw power these horses have. We made it up the bank and a bit down the road before I got her stopped. Wonders never cease; I still had the saddlebags.
Next it was Bev's turn to try to get Ray to go through the monster water. As my hands were full of Milady and keeping her there, I did not get to watch her progress into the water. I did get to see that she got quite a bit farther into it then Milady and I did. Then it happened again. Ray, following suite and doing as Malady does, reared up placing both front hooves on the bank. Now it is important to note that she was farther forward into the water then Malady was when she went jumped the bank back onto the road. Ray put one hoof of either side of a small tree that was about 8 to 10 inches in diameter and on a bank that was about 2 feet above Ray's head. It was too my horror that I watched Ray tense her muscles and lunge forward onto the bank with the sound of cracking wood and falling trees. The tree stood no chance against 1800 lbs of upset Shire and snapped to the ground; however, the tree and the under brush now prevented the newly shod horse from getting any traction so she could get her feet under her to regain her feet.
I watched, when I could, in horror as Ray scrambled with those steel shoes on top on the fallen tree (or possibly more then one fallen tree) only a foot or so from a 15 foot drop into the river with Bev holding on for dear life with just mane and a bareback pad to keep her from falling off Ray's back and under her flailing hooves.
How Bev ever made it out of that situation alive or how Ray got to a standing position without falling into the river I will never know. The whole thing lasted maybe a five minutes from Milady starting down the trail towards the water to a terrified Ray coming to stand next to me, with all four of us, horses and riders, visibly shaking.
A few minutes later Bev and I fell in behind a group of about 20 horses and went the cowboy way with them. To cross the same river, there was a gentle slope down to the water without a tree within 20 yards. The water was moving fast, but not very deep. Then a gentle slope up the other side.
The rest of the ride was long and very uneventful compared to the beginning.
It is my opinion that the true meaning of that sign was that if you consider your self a City Slicker you have no reason to be on a 25 mile ride and deserve to die. Cowboys obviously know how to do things the easy way...