Well, Rebel ended up at the barn, where the other horses were and we got ole Clyde out of the briars. Man, he was bleeding everywhere, hands, face, on his arms, and I thought we might all take a break or even let Clyde call the whole deal off if he wanted; nobody would think less of him if he did such a thing. But, Clyde just said, "he won't throw me like that next time." And, next time was gonna be right now. I went and got Rebel, brought him back and everyone took their places. It was funny 'cause all these brave, softball playing men were at least twice as far away from the horse as they were the first time Clyde tried to get on him. The guy with the video camera had picked it up and was still trying to film everything, but his arms were visibly shaking, holding the camera, and you can see this movement on the video when you watch it. Very tense moment. Everyone thought the same thing was going to happen the second time around. And, nobody said a word, except for Clyde, and his word was, "Go." But, this time, nobody had to run. Clyde got on the horse, as easy as can be, and Rebel just stayed there, frozen; did not move a muscle. Seems like Rebel had wore himself out from all that excitement and didn't have the energy required to repeat the scene. My new horse didn't move at all, which presented another type of problem, but, technically, this horse was broke, in the loosest sense of the word. Well, enough about Rebel, I could probably write a book about him if I wanted to (I'm not saying it would be a good book) 'cause that's just how I am. On and on I can go, about a horse, about endurance, about my take on life. I could bore you to tears if you let me, but I'll try and keep this one moving along. I mentioned that particular story about Rebel because it was my fondest memories of our past 8 years together. He, eventually, did become my daughter's endurance horse, but, Jennifer has since moved on to a new horse named "War Cry," and my wife was riding Rebel only because he was the safest horse in our barn. We had all talked about selling Rebel the last six months or so, but, like I said, it's hard for us to part with one who's been around so long. And, there we were, at this Georgia endurance ride, discussing whether or not we wanted to make this trade with a woman who owned a horse named "Satan." We talked about it during our endurance ride together on Saturday. Rebel did get through the 50 miles and my wife obtained her first completion at that distance. But, there were some problems and the vet almost pulled Rebel a couple of times for lameness. This had become a recurring problem at endurance rides, with Rebel, and a cause for quite a lot of frustration for the entire family. Kathy had finished her 25 miles, very quickly, on "Satan," and Ed, a friend of mine who rode with them a little on the first loop, told me the horse was never under control and galloped the entire distance as far as he could tell. "I wouldn't even call it a canter," Ed said, "it was a friggen gallop the entire time. I never rode with them long, but I kept running into them because that wacky horse was repeatedly throwing off his rider." Ed told me on one occasion the horse had run Kathy into a tree and someone had caught him but had a heck of a time getting the horse back to Kathy to finish the loop. The horse kept wanting to take off and race. We kept telling Kathy about Rebel's leg problems (on a pre ride vet check Rebel always looks a bit off), but she didn't seem concerned at all. I think she just really wanted to unload her horse and would have made a trade with anyone who was crazy enough to be interested in her guy. I guess I fit the bill on the "crazy enough" part because I was definitely interested. I just had a good feeling about "Satanic Spirit" I couldn't shake. During one of our breaks of the ride I went up and took another good look at "Spirit." He was standing there, just as calm as could be, and didn't even look like he'd been out for a ride at all, when, in fact, he had just finished a very fast 25 miles. He would have top tenned if he hann't dumped his rider so many times and lost all that time required for someone to catch him and bring him back to Kathy. As it turned out, he came in 13th place, and this got my attention. Her ride had started with over 50 riders. That, plus the fact Kathy was bleeding and black and blue on her face and part of her arms when I did see her come in for their finish. Her riding pants were torn in several places and there was mud and dried dirt all along her back, from her hair down to her thighs. She looked like she had just been in a rope pulling contest where she was on the losing team, up there in front of the line and the dividing line between the two teams was a big ole sloppy, four foot deep mud pit. To top it all off, she was walking around camp with a very severe limp; she looked like she needed crutches. I didn't have any crutches, but I did offer her a beer, which she readily accepted. Kathy had told me earlier, that at a previous 25 mile limited distance ride, "Satan" had taken off on her so fast, she came in first to the vet check out of more than 70 riders, but she didn't even bother to vet him in. She had no intentions of getting on him again, that day, because, she realized, she had no control and believed, very strongly, that if she were to continue on, this horse was going to kill her. All of this peaked my interest (OK, maybe I do have a death wish, but I just had a feeling about this horse), because I have seen horses of this type do quite well in endurance, with the right rider and lots of training. I did realize no one never knows how it's going to turn out until you actually start competing with the horse, and sitting there on that Saturday up in Georgia, I couldn't help but fantasize about Satanic Spirit. I wanted to ride in a 50 with my gal, Val (yea, on rare occasions she will enter a 50 miler). Not to talk with Val, cause when you ride with Val you're going too fast to talk anyway, but just to do it. I dream, therefore I am. lol. Well, after the third loop, the vet told my wife Rebel looked off and to come back for a final check when it was time for the three of us to leave. Past experience has shown us this is not good, and Rebel was more than likely to get pulled. This was my wife's second attempt at a 50 miler, her first ended with Rebel getting pulled at 45 miles (that particular ride was a 55 miler), and things were not looking good. She started to cry, and I said something really stupid like, "Well, isn't this the reason we're going to sell this horse anyway?" Not a good thing for me to say, cause the wife started yelling at me and I knew it was from her taking birth control pills when she didn't really have to. Kind of ingenious of her in fact, but she took some this week-end to delay her menstrual cycle, which was due this week-end, and this delay the "event," but, the problem is the pill kind of makes my wife a bit over the edge, when it comes to emotions, and I sure wasn't helping any. At the time, I had forgotten about the "pill" thing completely, and she's probably going to love me for writing about all this, so, let's move on here. We went back to the final check, and, the vet said Rebel looked better to him and Erica could go on the last loop. Things were looking up, and during that loop we sort of had a family conference to decide whether or not to make the trade. Erica and Jen both said OK, so it was kind of left to me to make the deal, with Kathy, or to back out of it.
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