Riding on dirt roads

["Sarah Roxanne Zawacki" <zawackis@pilot.msu.edu>]

    Hi there.  I just moved to a new area in Michigan, leaving the country
for a country-like home on a state highway.  The good news, thank God, is
that there are dirt roads behind our new house, albeit I had to get permission
from two landowning neighbors to ride to the dirt roads without taking the
highway.  My question is this: does anyone out there have tips for riding
on dirt roads?  My horse, Elliot, is seven this year (he's getting old!!),
15.2+ (probably 15.3 by now) and very, very, very leggy.  This is the third
year I've ridden him, and he used to be a racehorse, briefly.  Mentally,
he's pretty good.  If I get nervous, he'll get nervous.  He's pretty good
about cars, especially when he has a buddy.  He spooks at white things.
By "spooking" I mean "obviously takes notice and then arcs around the
offending object to avoid attack".
    If I'm going to ride at all, on more than an acre of land, I'll either
have to haul Elliot in the trailer or ride on the roads.  There *are* some
state parks around here, with quite a bit of land, and some are within
riding distance.  I really don't want to have to hook up, load the trailer,
load the horse, use the gas, yadda yadda, everytime I want to go for a ride.
    So if anyone has recommendations as to keeping a sound horse on dirt
roads (they're not like pavement-dirt roads, that you can drive 50 on,
they're sort of pot-holed in places and, (here's the best part) it's a
25 zone) and how to stay safe on dirt roads, I would appreciate any
experiences, ideas, etc.
    Also, I would like to announce that Elliot drank out of TWO mud
puddles on today's ride!  This was very exciting to me.  And we had this
bizarre experience that sort of sums Elliot up.  A car was passing us,
going in the opposite direction that we were, and my significant other
person, Ryan, on my mom's horse, Holly, was behind us.  This was fine, until
I saw that there was a dirt bike tailing the car, which was going about
10 miles an hour.  I was getting ready for the dirtbike to catch Elliot's
attention, and sure enough, he stopped, stared, and didn't move.  Which was
great, because I'll take standing perfectly still over cantering in place
any day of the week.  Still, he was responding a lot more to the dirt bike
than I had expected.  I waved at the nice people for going so slow as they
went by, dirt bike included.  Elliot still stood there, staring off into
space.  He gave a little snort, like "What *is* that, but I'm not going to
get violent about it?" Then I realized that he hadn't seen the car, or
the dirtbike, because he was too busy being transfixed by two ducks, swimming
in a ditch a hundred feet away.  Figures.


                                Sarah
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