I was told a great story by a cattle rancher
we knew many years ago. He rode his horse over to his neighbor's to help
with a roundup. His return home, several miles, was threatened by the
sudden presence of a blizzard (in May!). His only hope was to give his
horse its head, and sure enough, the horse took him home safely.
I've moved a number of horses from various parts of Egypt to
the desert edge by Cairo and Abu Sir. I find that the horses are about as good
at learning directions and where they are as people are. This is in terms of
information acquisition. Some of them learn really quickly how the hills and
wadis in the desert work and where the farm trails go. Once they learn it,
they know it. Finished. But until they learn it, sometimes I get some funny
comments from the partner with the extra legs regarding MY sense of direction.
I found that my gelding, Bunduq, who never really got a chance to develop his
sense of direction while living in a schooling stable inside a high walled
compound, took longer to learn his way around the desert than some of the
others, and at the same time, he was much more obnoxious in his insistence
that I was going to get us lost. Or, sometimes, that I already had gotten us
lost. This from the horse that thought camels were so interesting that he
followed four of them for almost 15 km and then didn't have a clue where he
was.
Once in a while you run into a horse with a rotten sense of
direction, but they are rare. There was one mare at a nearby stable that used
to crack us all up every time we rode in the desert. Chantal would pick a set
of mango trees and be adamant that the path to the road was THERE...ignoring
the fact that there were about 25 mango groves along the desert. She wouldn't
have lasted long in the wild.
Dory, who's lived in the Abu Sir area for
about 10 years now, knows with every turn whether we are pointed home (you can
tell by the RPM's) and not too long ago decided to go home by herself from a
neighbouring farm, leaving me to call a friend to pick me and her tack up with
the car, That one could be trusted to get you home in the dark if you were
sleeping.
Maryanne Cairo where the homing horses live
On
Thursday, February 5, 2004, at 05:04 PM, Elkenchild@xxxxxxx wrote:
Yes, I was just wondering (and maybe I'll post this to ridecamp,
because I know the group will know), when we are in the middle of our lovely
trail wandering, how good is my horse's sense of direction? If I ride her in
a loop over the hills, will she still realize we're heading home if we come
down the other side of the ridge? I bet she does! Need to check it out.
Other observations on horses' sense of direction?
Laura "Not
all who wander are lost." (jrr
tolkien)
