How SLOW Can We Trot? [story]

[Lynne Glazer <lglazer@cyberg8t.com>]

This weekend I satisfied my curiousity about whether what a friend (now
ex-friend, in spades) had claimed about her
Arabs was true--she said that her horses got pissy when out with gaited
horses on the trail because they had to trot all the time.

This was 5 years ago, and back then I was conditioning my TWH mare for
endurance.  Misfortune followed in her accidental death, and her
replacement was an Arab.

This weekend, I decided to take my Arab mare to a group ride put on by
ETI, a California trail-riding org, just to GO somewhere where the
trails were rideable.  They were offering gaited and non-gaited rides.
Upon arrival, the posted rides included a 27 mile ride on Saturday, and
a 15 mile ride on Sunday.  Saturday's ride was to be between 6 and 7
hours.

Seemed a better bet than to go with the slow group, walk perhaps 8-10
miles in the high desert sun, yuck.

Instead Saturday, it was rain and wind, followed by sun, and we swapped
the distances/days.  Indeed, my mare had to trot the entire time though
the challenge was that it was a SLOW trot, lots of broken up rocks, the
climbs weren't bad by endurance standards.  The pace was between 5 and 6

mph according to the GPS the trail boss carried.

The only signs of pissiness (is that a word?) was once when my mare
stopped to pee, then bolted to catch up with the group, anything to do a

different gait for the second day in a row.  All the horses were TWH or
MFT and all were owned by locals in the high desert riding club.  On the

second day the group collectively gave my mare an A for her behavior;
they had been exposed to enough ditzy Arabs (which they agreed had
largely been made that way by their ditzy owners) to have really colored

their views.

The pace was so slow that I practiced my sitting trot eq a lot, and on
Sunday added sitting trot without stirrups to my repetoire.  On my
Passier all purpose saddle, hard as a rock.  Naturally I was the only
rider out of 80 or so that had attended the campout that a) wore a
helmet, b)wore anything other than jeans to ride in, and c) rode an
English saddle.  Everyone was very friendly, the ETI'ers are a great
bunch of folks.

Ember was unused to the lack of water on the route, she kept asking,
where's the vet check?  I thought she'd be sore from all that sustained
slow gear, but she seems fine.  Back to Chino Hills next weekend, at
normal speeds.

Lynne
and Rem-member Me