Re: re:Posse ride

["Maryanne Stroud Gabbani" <gabbani@starnet.com.eg>]

I've followed this thread with some interest, tho' we don't have to worry
too much about liability here (Thank God the court system is a mess) and we
usually have "trails" that are easily about 100 yards wide in the Sahara.
But as Joe points out, things happen and you try to react as well as you can
and sometimes it doesn't work. My now-19 year old son no longer rides after
an accident that we had in the desert about 8 years ago. He and I were
galloping up a rise in the middle of the desert and encountered two riders
just below the brow of the hill on the other side. There literally was 10
miles to either side of us and no trail whatsoever to constrain you, so
figure the odds. We had to swerve suddenly to miss them and I chose to go
one direction while he chose the other....but his mare, my chestnut Dorika,
lost her balance in the sand and fell with him. He had a compression
fracture of the dorsal vertebrae 7 and 8 and would have been paralyzed
probably if she hadn't stood perfectly still when she got up, because we had
to pry the reins out of his hand. She earned her retirement in peace, no
matter whatever happens later, that day.  Everything worked out ok, though I
spent his 7th grade year carrying his schoolbooks because he wasn't allowed
to carry any weight once he was back on his feet after a month in bed.
We had an easy 100 square miles of nothing around us, only 4 people riding
horses or even camels that day in the area, and we still met head on. If
that can happen there, ANYTHING can happen anywhere else, and you have to be
ready for it.

Maryanne Stroud Gabbani
Cairo, Egypt
gabbani@starnet.com.eg


> Then I guess you should stay home.  If I'm sprinting to the finish
> line and find a pickup truck blocking the designated trail, I'm not
> going to sacrifice my horse (and possibly myself) by running him into
> the truck.  I'm going to go around the best way I can.  I will of
> course try to avoid endangering anyone else, but depending on the
> circumstances that may turn out to be impossible.
>
> No, don't really stay home.  Just keep in mind that in emergencies one
> must often make split-second decisions with limited information, and
> it's the pits to have people who weren't even there second-guess your
> decisions after the fact.