Off to HOTR!

Ride story to follow....

Riding to School

Jasper can now add "alternative transportation" to his list of accomplishments!

Since I started veterinary school in Pullman, WA I started fantasizing about the possibility of riding to school. The town is small and there are hundreds of gravel-road tributaries that lead to the edge of campus. When I moved into the country at the end of a few of those gravel tributaries, my fantasy grew and started to take shape. The dream really solidified this past year and became a goal I wanted to accomplish before I graduated, just to be able to say I did it. However, many criteria needed to be met in order to be safe. I needed to be able to start later in the day, I needed to have a good amount of daylight remaining so we wouldn't be caught in the dark on the way home. Jasper needed to be fit and used to riding with traffic and other boogey men. It was looking like the spring would be the perfect time.

Last Wednesday night on my way back from neighboring town Moscow, ID, I turned down one of the "shortcut" roads. Suddenly, it occurred to me that the next day would be the LAST possible day I'd be able to make my attempt. I started to become giddy with the prospect of being forced into fulfilling my dream--up until this point I'd always had an excuse.

The next morning I awoke early and grimaced as I saw frost on the grass and saw the outside temps--21 degrees. Luckily, the wind was almost nil, which would help a lot. I saddled Jasper with freezing hands, and made sure to boot him on all four as I wasn't sure the kinds of crud we'd encounter along the busier highways' shoulders we'd have to ride on. I mounted and headed down the driveway with the sounds of Ony's panicked whinnies chasing us. As soon as we were out of sight of the house, we picked up a trot. Jasper was obviously feeling great, as he started asking to go faster and faster. We essentially spent the first 25% of the trip arguing over the speed. He was in full-arab mode spooking and balking at every tumbleweed and dirt clod on the road.

Just before we made the left turn onto the busiest shoulder of the trip, I hopped down and checked our boots (it's been a while since I've used them, just wanted to make sure). They were still firmly attached and Jasper was jumping around like an idiot, anxious to get going again. We crossed the road and picked up the trot along the shoulder. Jasper wanted to trot on the pavement, and I wanted him to trot on the gravel shoulder. Ugh. Every time a car came up behind us I'd make him slow to a walk, just to be safe. We made it to the busy intersection and crossed without incident on to a little pavement road. I got off and walked across all the pavement parts--I didn't need any funny business. When we got to the long gravel road that would dump us about a mile behind campus, I remounted and off we went. Thankfully, he had stopped playing "let's pretend we're afraid" and had settled into business mode. We covered a lot of ground fairly quickly, and it was nice to see some new sights on horseback.

The road leading into the backside of campus was the worst--I'd known this before I started. What I didn't remember, however, was how long that stretch actually was. It ended up being about 3 times longer than I'd remembered. The road is curvy, the shoulder is about 6 inches long with steep dropoffs into ditches, and the airport is on the other side. I handwalked most of this nearly in the middle of the road. Since it was spring break, we encountered very few cars. We pulled off and trotted through ploughed fields whenever possible, and I could tell Jasper was anxious to get going since he offered repeatedly to pick up the canter.

The most dramatic event occurred just before we got to the edge of campus. We have a large herd of research ponies at one corner, a stretch of research sheep and goats along a corridor, and a herd of research grizzlies and bighorn sheep marking either side of the entrance onto the road to the veterinary school. I knew I'd be handwalking this section and so dismounted, thankfully, just before the herd of ponies looked over en masse to see us walking past. Their cute little pony ears perked up for a few seconds before the entire herd of 1-200 moved off together in a huge stamped. Jasper got pretty excited, and I was very happy he has such good ground manners. The panic was soon passed, and we moved on.

I was pretty proud of my boy as he calmly walked passed clanging loud machinery and moving equipment. He didn't blink at the goats bleating to us as we passed, nor did he even seem to notice three of six bears raised up on their hind legs, big thick claws reaching through the chain link fence watching us pass. I did, though! They did seem genuinely curious, their loose lips and flared nostrils trying to smell what was passing.

When we turned onto Grimes, I decided to go ahead and mount. The traffic thickened slightly here, but Jasper was unconcerned and seemed to really be enjoying himself. I sensed he knew we were a little on display at this point, and he behaved like a perfect gentleman. We rode down the sidewalk for the last half mile to the veterinary school. Jasper was being especially careful stepping on and off the curbs, and when I made him stop and wait to cross at the pedestrian walks, he did very well. At one point, we passed two men sitting on a bench, smoking. I called out, "Good morning!" as they sat and stared, mouths slightly agape. Oh, well.

We reached the backside of campus in more time than I'd anticipated, and I was officially late to my morning class. I found a stall for Jasper and untacked him in record time. A barn helper was there to feed and water him, thankfully. I went running (more like waddling quickly) with my saddle in my arms towards my classroom, calling apologies over my shoulder as I went. I bolted up the stairs and made it to class 25 minutes late.

[Side note: I'm on a rotation right now with four other people. We have mini "classes" in the morning and then perform necropsies from 1-5 every day. So when I say "class" what I really mean is a small meeting with a professor. This day, we were looking at parasite eggs in fecal flotations.]

When I entered the room, my professor looked up from the multi headed scope and said, "So you rode your horse to school today? And he didn't spook at all the traffic? That's pretty cool." I knew I was fine, but apologized anyways.

I was pretty exhilarated for the rest of the day. And of course on this day, we had so many necropsies we went way overtime. So I had to get a ride home, hook up the trailer, and return to pick Jasper up after dark. Oh, well. We ended up doing 12 miles in a little over 2 hours, so it was a nice training ride before HOTR this coming weekend.

"We're wearing BLANKETS!!!"

I paced back and forth in my house glancing repeatedly out at the ponies. It had started raining in the afternoon, and I had dropped Callie off at her new (temporary) home earlier. The boys were standing in the rain, determined to cause me worry with their solemn looks and dripping forelocks. Finally, I caved. I carried a small bucket of grain out to the covered-on-three-sides barn (filled with free-choice hay) and dumped it in their pans. Jasper was shivering with his entire body--deep, pulsating muscle fasciculations. Although the air wasn't cold, the wind combined with the soaking rain was enough to drive me indoors despite the two-page list of to-dos for our upcoming ride.

I put a heavyweight blanket on Jasper and he stood amazingly well for the process. Ony was a little more complicated. He's only wore a blanket once before. But he stood quite well and allowed me to buckle and velcro all the appropriate bits and pieces. When I let him go, he went trotting to Jasper looking quite smug, "We're wearing BLANKETS!!!!" He started antagonizing Jasper by tugging and pulling on his blanket. Whenever Jasper would attempt to retaliate, little Ony's butt would whip around and Jasper would rear. They played like this for an hour, giddy with the knowledge they were impervious to the raindrops.

Good Ride

I can't believe it's already been 30 days tomorrow that little Onyx has been at the trainer's. I'm excited to bring him home and am looking very forward to getting him out on the trail. He hasn't had his first actual trail ride yet, only the one road ride. However, I'm confident it will be no big deal like everything else and he'll soon be up and running as an up-and-coming endurance mount. My plan is not to use him for an actual ride until he is AT LEAST 7, which is three years from now. I may even wait an additional year after that, depending on how well Jasper is going by that point (he'll be going fine, because Jasper will compete soundly into his 20's when he will take over as a junior mount for my kidlets that will be old enough to ride by that point).

Jasper and I had a wonderful ride on Saturday with Paul, Ron-G, Heidi and George. Heidi will be going to her first endurance ride on March 27th at the Home on the Range ride in Washtucna. She's very excited and I'm happy we were both able to convince Paul (PJ) to come along and ride Ron-G. PJ and Ron-G have only ever done ride-and-ties, so this will be their first foray into endurance as well. PJ's excited because he's only ever horse-camped in the back of his truck or in a tent and claims we'll be "living like kings" with my LQ and stove access.

During our ride on Saturday we got in a couple of tight situations involving ever-increasing snow depth and horses that thought they should CANTER through it. Yikes. No harm done, though. It was a wonderful day--temps in the high 50's and the sun beating down on our smiling faces. We chatted and laughed a lot, and PJ commented how lucky he was to be able to ride with two young ladies at his age. About a mile from home, Paul pulled us in close with a very serious look on his face and told us we were about to undertake the ULTIMATE Moscow Mountain challenge. He pulled three beers out of his packs and said we had to ride with one hand and drink with the other without spilling a drop. It was a wonderful challenge, and none of us spilled a thing. When we got back, he told us to remember this day for the rest of our lives and one day when we were sixty we had to look back and realize what PJ has to go through riding at his age. He's so full of baloney--that man runs 8-12 miles every single day. I'm going to miss PJ and our mountain rides.

In other news, I've come to the difficult decision to look for a new home for Callie, our Belgian mare. She's been an incredible companion and friend these past five years, but I feel like it's unfair to have her just sitting around while the endurance horses require so much time. If we had a place of our own in Boise to keep her, things would be different. But our regular place has decided she doesn't want Callie around any more (claims she damaged her barn--we think it may have been like that before). We'd have to board her somewhere else, and it would be far away and I just don't like the idea. I have a few potential new owners already, and will have them sign a first right of refusal contract so that I can get her back if anything goes wrong.

Ridin' Pictures

They're not the greatest quality, but you get the idea. I just really hope I don't look like an Amazonian riding a yearling...