RE: Tailing

[Steph Teeter <step@fsr.com>]

This is absolutely true! Maybe on rare occasions a person could
tail with dignity, but for the most part, real life, it's a do what you
can as fast as you can situation. At Death Valley this winter, on
the day when all the horses went up the mountain the wrong way
and then had to come back down, a lot of folks got off and led
or tailed down the steep areas. Since we had been at the back of
the pack, we sort of stopped and moved aside and watched
everybody (70+ horses) go back down before we did, so we could
keep our back of the pack status. At one point the pack sort
of thinned out and we were getting ready to start down when 
I heard 'clomp clomp clomp' and 'eeeeeaaassssyy' and there
was Dean Jackson hanging on to his horse's tail as he was
trotting down the trail. Unfortunately Dean had lost the rein,
but he sure wasn't letting go of the tail . Moving pretty fast
too :)

Steph

  > I would prefer to leave both
>reins attached to his headstall and use
>a tailing line that clips to the 
>reins and slides so I can have direct "steering" for both directions.

Ha, you seem to believe this will be a rather orderly procedure.  There's
not enough time for such as that.  Just jump off, hang onto that tailing
line (preferably quickly run through the stirrup to keep if from being
too low), and if you want the horse to go to the right, pull the tail
left, and tail left for horse right.  You probably won't have to steer,
he'll be in that "Horses went this way, so will I" mode.  That's fun when
they decide to canter....can you take really BIG steps?

Angie

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