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.