Just outside of Guerneville in Sonoma County, Armstrong Woods is a state park open to hikers, mountain bikers and riders. The trails are marked accordingly so if everyone obeys the rules you shouldn’t have trouble with flying mountain bikes. The trails were in great shape when I rode there (September, 2013) and seem to be extensively maintained.
Horse Stories
On the Trail: Lake Sonoma
Great dirt road trail, with well-marked single-track loops to choose from. A lot of climbing, though not steep. From parking lot to lake is about an hour on the fire road.
Great parking lot with outhouse, water trough and hitching posts. Be prepared to cross paved road near a turn to reach trails.
Trails can be a little rocky, but a horse with tough hooves should be fine barefoot. Continue reading
On the Trail: Spud Point, Bodega Bay
Good ride for fit horses. No hills to climb, but sand all the way to the beach. No bikes, lots of paths to choose from. Water trough at trail head.
Easy access parking lot, though proximity of parking lot to road makes some people (like me) nervous. Continue reading
The Arabian Horse Association takes a stand
A couple of years ago, the Board of Directors of the Arabian Horse Association made a decision to publicly support lifting the ban on horse slaughter in the US. They did not consult the membership. Today, the membership affirmed that support through their representatives.
I spent most of this week at the AHA’s Annual Convention in Denver, Colorado. I have been a member of the association for at least 30 years. I have been a delegate for my local club two or three times, I’ve attended at least five conventions. It is safe to say I’ve been part of the AHA for a long time. I love Arabian horses, I consider them pets, I go to great lengths to take care of them. The AHA promotes Arabians, funds activities and competitions for Arabians and their people. It’s the main club for Arab horse owners.
2012 convention delegates discussed and voted on several rule changes and association policies. We discussed whether or not adult amateur western riders should be able to ride their horses faster than a collected gait. We discussed whether children under the age of ten should have to know how to back their horses up. The delegates voted on all of this, some results made more sense than others. The final vote was whether or not the association would take a neutral stance on the re-opening of horse slaughter houses in the US, or whether they would accept the Board’s decision to support lifting the ban.
The unprepared horse owner’s guide to body-clipping
Before: this coat has a problem. This is what it looked like after being washed.
Your horse may be old, he may suffer from Cushing’s disease (ask your vet if your horse needs to be tested), you may just have a hairy horse. But when it’s May 1 and all the other horses around are sleek and shiny looking and yours still looks like something from the set of 10,000 BC, you should probably body-clip him. I’m saying “him” because the horse I clipped today is a gelding. You don’t need to do it because other people and horses will judge you or your horse. You need to do it because your horse is sweltering day after day. You don’t care how he looks, you just don’t want him to suffer.
Maybe you are working your horse in the winter, in which case you may be preparing to show or do something else where other people do see your horse and judge you by his appearance. If this is the case, you should just pay a professional groom to do it. It takes a lot of time, equipment and skill to do it so your horse to looks good. It is probably worth paying someone else to do that if you don’t know how, which you don’t if you are unprepared. Don’t make the mistake of thinking it will grow out by show season. A bad clip job will last all year.
Morning Hike
This morning I climbed the little mountain to see what I could see. (I hadn’t seen the mares in over 14 hours so really I did need to see what I could see.)
Seems like just a few weeks ago that the hill looked like this.
The hills aren’t so green anymore, because the hot summer is here. Continue reading
Fourth of July
Every Fourth of July I worry about the horses being startled by fireworks. We live over the hill from town so we can’t see the city fireworks but we can hear them. The sound always startles me, seems to start too early, while there is still light in the sky. Tonight was no different.
I went out to do the usual evening rounds, and made a point of checking each horse in the pasture. On my way out to check the mares, I glanced at the “mash unit,” a half-acre paddock where I’m keeping Dolly and the oldest rescued mare. They need mash twice a day this time of year. I didn’t look closely at those two because I would be coming back to feed them anyway.
Little Warm Puppies
Cowboys like smoky old pool rooms and clear mountain mornings, little warm puppies and children and… I have always been more at ease in smoky old pool rooms than with children. It isn’t that I dislike kids, I just don’t know what to do with them or how to relate to them. I am less at a loss when I can put them on a horse.
Some friends, call them Susan and Eric, brought their kids to the ranch yesterday. The children are 8 and 6, I think. I will call them Lily and Rose respectively. This presented a problem I have not faced in a while: how to find horses suitable for small children to ride?
Previous entries have detailed what happened to our pony ride regulars, The Old Grey Mare and May. They were great with kids, even though I didn’t realize May was until very late in her career.
We have plenty of horses. When I explain that I don’t know if I have a horse someone can ride, they often do not understand what I mean. There is a difference between a broke horse and one just anyone can ride. There are a variety of horses that can be called “bomb proof,” as there are different kinds of “bombs.” Children can be great for diffusing those bombs, or they can be firecrackers. The horse needs to be prepared for both.
Out to Pasture Part Three: May Morning
I don’t know how many times May colicked. She came to us when she was about eleven years old and she made it to thirty three years old. Or maybe thirty six. After a certain point I stop keeping track. I don’t think it was thirty six because that is an age I pay attention to. I really don’t know how many times she colicked. At least ten, maybe twenty times.
Out to Pasture Part Two: November
It was 1994 and my brother’s show mare, about 17 years old, had never been bred and had been identified as having some version of “undersized” or “shriveled” ovaries. I don’t understand that diagnosis, never have, not even when I heard it in Crimes of the Heart. It seems absurd. Aren’t they supposed to be wrinkled? And how BIG do they have to be to produce a teensy little egg anyway? At the time I had lost track of the mare’s age, but even if she had been “only” 14 as I thought, that was pretty late for a first breeding.
In the Land of the Houyhnhnms 