Sorry, Lisa, I want to get one more in before we shut the door on this one. For AERC not to have any age restriction at all for juniors is something I can't quite fathom. One serious child accident is all it will take and I bet that would change very quickly. The thing is, Heidi, even if you did travel down a lot more dangerous trails, alone, as a child (where were your parents?), compared with the trails you've encountered as an endurance rider, you didn't ride them with a 100 other super charged athletic horses and their competitive riders. It's the other horses, and riders, that make this sport an extreme one, and if I saw a 5 year old on a horse at the start of an endurance ride with over 100 starters, I would freak out. Maybe, that's why it's better if I don't ever leave the Southeast. That picture doesn't sit well with me and it shouldn't sit well with any responsible parent. 8 is barely old enough, and when my kid was 8 she could pass for 5 unless she opened her mouth. I'm with Joe on this one even if it's for different reasons. Yea, I might be carrying some of that fearful baggage that Heidi mentions, but some would call that baggage "experience," and the 5 year old doesn't have much of that. cya, Howard (Save the Kids!!!! lol) ----- Original Message ----- From: Heidi Smith Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 8:03 PM To: Howard Bramhall; ridecamp Subject: Re: [RC] [RC] Very young riders in AERC >here in the Southeast the minimum age is 8 and that might even be too young. At some of those mountain rides I don't think I'd want a kid younger than 12 on those trails. Good grief. I rode ALONE on our cattle range from the time I was 10. The test of whether you could go somewhere by yourself or not was whether or not you could get off your horse, open and close the wire cowboy gate, and get back on, all without help. I was a tiny little thing, but figured out all by myself that I could use my halter like a block and tackle to close the gates I didn't have the arm strength to close, and I could darn sure get my horse on a sidehill to get back on. I haven't been to ANY endurance rides that have had trails as treacherous as many I routinely rode out there. Coming back here as an adult, I've puckered the proverbial sphincter more than once riding the old trails I rode as a kid, and realized that I trotted and cantered those, and even dove off them to chase cows from time to time. Hey, after spending hours and hours out in the Lemhi Mountains by myself as a kid, endurance riding seemed like a piece of cake, when I finally got the opportunity to do it. Kids are a lot tougher than many adults give them credit for, and they have the added blessing of not having all that fearful baggage that we accumulate as we age. Heidi
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