Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

At my last ride, Lake Oroville, while 3 of us were already at the trough, our horses had just started drinking, about 5-7 riders trotted up and pushed our horses out. Then my horse wouldn’t drink anymore after they all trotted away. I later passed these riders (they’d received misinformation about the distance to the next vet check) and at the next trough I put up my hand and loudly requested that they stay back until our horses were through drinking. I don’t think I should have had to do that, but I did. There were some very experienced riders in the group and I think they were so caught up in the “race” (way back at mid-pack) they just didn’t think. I’ll probably use this technique every time now, because you just can’t depend on the rider being thoughtful.

Then again, at one ride, I approached a trough, about a horse length away I stopped my horse, he had other ideas and just pulled through my restraint and stuck his head into the trough. It was totally unexpected and caught me off guard. I did apologize to the others there, and fortunately their horses weren’t bothered. Now I hold him back further if we need to wait our turn.

Kathy 

Kristi wrote:

So this brings me to a question. What IS proper

protocol at AERC rides at a water source? When I rode

NATRC, people generally politely waited their turn.

But in AERC, with it being a race for so many people,

in my experience there's no way they are going to give

up some time waiting for a bubble of space for their

horse, so they just 'pile in'. As someone who doesn't

care about time, should I just assume that I'm the one

who will have to pull back and wait for that space for

my horse to open up? Or should I expect him to figure

out that he needs to drink and ignore all the strange

horses sniffing and poking him with their noses? 

Kristi iluvdez at yahoo dot com