When I lived in the Sarasota area, I always found the wild hogs that
roamed around the palmettos to be quite exciting when they decided to
take off. The good thing about the FL sand hills is it is so dry
because of they are sand hills and hold little water - we don't have a
lot of pigs except along the rivers.
I, however, remember many hog encounters in Myakka River State Park :-( .
Truman
Jennifer Fleet wrote:
For the first several months of the 2 1/2 years I loved in Florida, it
was a constant battle to sit Shahtahr's spooks. All of the trails
seem to be lined with very dense palmetto. Shahtahr just wasn't used
to not being able to see what was on either side of him down by his
feet. Every rustle in those palmettos (armadillo, bird, whatever)
resulted in a spin or a huge jump sideways. I was really reaching my
limit when he seemed to get used to it and was pretty much back to
normal. Then of course, we moved back to CA. lol
Normal, for this horse, is GREAT on winding mountainous single-track
trail, terrible on wide open roads with trees or brush on the sides,
and so-so in open-field type of situations. It seems that on the
mountainous single-track, he's got a lot to concentrate on and I think
he enjoys those, so nary a spook. Wide roads with stuff on either
side, he's not preoccupied enough to not spook, so if he senses
ANYTHING off to the side of us, he'll spook bad almost unseating me.
If we're in the middle of nothing, we can hand gallop, trot, canter,
whatever and he'll be pretty much okay until he gets bored, and then
he'll do his sideways jumps...but not the spins I got in Florida when
he couldn't see anything through the palmetto.
Jennifer
-- “I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in
pseudoscience
“I maintain there is much more wonder in science
than in
pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any
meaning,
science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one,
of
being true.” Carl Sagan
