More on horses and traffic

["Tamara Woodcock" <nis75p06@mindspring.com>]

As someone who's ONLY available riding area is along the road, this is a
subject near and dear to my heart.  I ride on farm-to-market roads (usually
20+ foot shoulders) and county roads (some with no shoulders at all).  I've
also in the past had to make do with riding alongside the interstate
(usually 50+ foot shoulders).

All of my horses have, by necessity, been trained to IGNORE traffic.  Now
I'm not saying this is necessarily a good idea, in fact I can see the
argument for this getting both the horse and myself squashed one day, but it
has been the only way for me to be able to ride outside of my very small
pasture.  All of my horses (even the non-trail type barrel racers) are
started in hand on the shoulder of the road for "traffic school".  They
spend so much time watching traffic hurtle at them from both directions, it
eventually desensitizes them.  They have to accept as gospel that vehicles
stay on the road and there is no need to get out of the way and run home.
When they can graze the shoulders right up to the road itself without even
lifting up a head to watch the traffic, we move to mounted work.
(Admittedly, this attitude did make it very hard to use trucks to round them
up the day the UPS man left the front gate open, but that's another story.)
Before I consider a horse traffic safe, I should be able to ride just off
the blacktop and have a semi roll past doing 60.  Then we go tackle the
county roads where the safety margin is narrower, and though the roads are
worse, I think the drivers go faster.

By the time a horse is safe enough for me to let non-family and/or children
ride it outside the pasture, the poor animal has been:  honked at by
imbeciles, opps, I mean teen-agers, who wait until they are right beside the
horse to do this; had gravel sprayed at it by those same types of imbeciles,
braved large farm equipment rattling down the road, dually's pulling
trailers full of cows, and many other evils.  This is now a traffic safe
horse.

Doing all of this at night is completely different.  Having the horse accept
the pain and discomfort of headlights in the eyes and brave the weird
shadows those same headlights throw on the road, takes a very trusting
horse.  I spend 3/4 of my night riding, checking behind me for approaching
headlights and the remaining time looking for the best place to get off of
the road in case the drivers see neither my flashlight nor reflective vest
and decide to pull off of the rode on top of me.  I have no problems riding
through someone's yard if the driver doesn't seem to be watching out for me.
I wait in safe driveways for suspect traffic.  I wait at bridges until I
hear absolutely no hint of traffic, and I always try to be on the inside of
corners and don't go around blind ones until there is no hint of traffic.
As for riding either with or against traffic, I do which ever one has the
best footing or best escape avenues.

Now, all this careful planning and training goes out the window if the
enemy, I mean drivers <g>, have been dipping a bit to freely into the sauce,
or just plan on running down a horse.  But I suppose I could be killed just
as easily if they hit me when I was in my car as if they hit me when I'm on
my horse.  And for the record, my horse Roo, is NOT traffic safe yet!  But
we're working on it. <G>

-tamara
“The mission, he thought, probably failed because of a series of logical,
reasonable, carefully considered decisions, each of which seemed like a good
idea at the time.  Like most colossal disasters.” - Mary Doria Russell, The
Sparrow
http://www.mindspring.com/~nis75p06/
AOL Instant Messenger:  Conthesis
ICQ: 49294214