[RC] Happy Newbies Horse and Rider, Part 1 - Dean A. Conti
Jimmy (he’s the horse) and I are definitely members of
the Newbie Division of Endurance Riding. I essentially knew nothing about it
until attending the PAC 2003 when I crewed for the Kanavys (a friend of mine,
Erwin, has one of their horses). It became obvious to me by the end of
the weekend I would have to give this thing a try. So this past weekend I just
completed my first ride, a 25 mile LD (BTW it’s fine with me they are not
endurance miles), at the Klickitat Trek. So now I would like to make a few
observations and ask a bunch of questions. I will then shrink into the
background to continue my knowledge absorption. (Or is it adsorption? A little
vet help here).
The boring (but possibly necessary) details of our first
ride so perhaps someone can answer my questions and make suggestions (and
others can learn from my mistakes):
My background is from mountain climbing and backpacking, but
the knees are not what they use to be. (Yes, I was one of those dreaded
horse-eating pack carriers)! So five years ago our family (wife and two
daughters) brought horses into our lives (happily including the 4H thing). The
horses are at the house and we have access to a nice 14 mile loop trail from
there. Two years ago we purchased a four horse trailer so we could start
exploring some of the tremendous trails that are in this area (Seattle). Some of
the mountain trails we ride gain 2000 vertical feet in 2 miles of length, so
good conditioning just happens (nothing like sitting on the horse at
7000’ in the Alpine Lake Wilderness).
Based on suggestions gleaned from RC, I added faster flat
conditioning rides to prepare Jimmy, a registered 15.3H, 12 year old
Quarterhorse (he was raced early in his life and is built more like a TB). So
after a quick 15 miler warm-up and a few off days we headed down to Mt Adams.
Ride day brought what could arguably be called perfect horse
weather. Temperature upper 50’s to lower 60s. A little sun, then mostly
cloudy with a little rain but a lot of fine mist (comparable to what the NFL
uses on the sidelines for hot games). Overheating was never a problem (except
for the riders under their rain coat). So my friend Erwin and I stayed away
from the start and let the first group go before starting. We trotted the first
11 mile loop and fortunately our horses were willing to allow others to pass
without any (big) problem. We walked into camp and both horses quickly pulsed
down. After a little coaxing, Jimmy drank and ate well, but not voraciously.
One strange thing did happen. Erwin’s horse, an Arab,
went from dry to white foam on the chest in a matter of a minute or two. We
were doing an easy trot on fairly flat ground and with no pressure from another
horse (at least the humans didn’t notice any). His horse wasn’t
showing any signs of distress and then almost as quickly he dried back out. Did
we just miss something that he saw that made him nervous (and could that cause
that type of reaction)?
Per plan the second loop was at a faster clip, with a
considerable amount of cantering. We ended up in a group of four others (with
another QH setting the pace). There were plenty of water crossings and Jimmy
drank at about half of them. Everything was going along smoothly until we were
doing a fairly fast canter down a slight hill when one of my stirrup leathers
came off the saddle and it fell completely off. I’m not a good enough
rider to sit what we were doing, so I ended up bear hugging Jimmy’s neck
with both arms to stay on, and thus unable to slow him down (even though I
still had the rains in my hands) . Fortunately the rider in front of us, Jill,
noticed the change in beat and started to slow her horse down (who was not
particularly interested in listening since Jimmy didn’t seem to mind my
hanging onto his neck and thus was keeping the pressure on). So at a slightly
slower canter I bailed off (instead of waiting to fall off), and fortunately we
both kept the wheels down as we skidded to a stop. Everyone patiently waited as
Jimmy and I ran back up the hill to fetch the errant stirrup.
