The best road safety is staying at home ...
I revisited my reasons for not taking children on trail rides with me this weekend. Especially where the environment is not controlled -- as in there are cars and busy roads and all manner of things to get in trouble with.
Now, I hope I don't offend anyone, because I know there are young people who are very competent riders that can handle very difficult situations ... but, in general I don't like taking anyone out who is less than 16 and pretty advanced. At least not on the kind of trails that I ride anyway. It would be a lot different if we were riding on a big farm with fences and wide, flat or slightly hilly terrain that wasn't too long.
So, Saturday. I arrive at the barn keeping my plans to trail ride with my buddy Judi. It's raining lightly and her horse is new to the trail riding bit, but she decides we can handle it anyway because Sam, my horse, is a pro. We get ready to go and suddenly we have an 11 yr old and a 14 yr old, both novice to intermediate riders, joining us. Grrness. Should have just said what I was thinking right then. 14 yr old is riding a horse she doesn't know very well yet (he's a new purchase) and neither girl has been out longer than 30 minutes. This is not what I signed up for. I intended to be gone at least an hour, we'd be riding along busy roads at least part of the time, and there were some good galloping lanes assuming the footing wasn't too bad. We'd at least be trotting quite often. At least, that's what I had in mind. We get out on the road and things start out just great until we get down a grassy lane. We all decided to trot down the lane, at which point the new horse loses his little horsey mind! the girl gets him under control (it was really quite admirable considering what a jerk he was!) but is obviously nervous and worried she won't be able to control him. I offer to switch from my fun and fantastic pony to the nut-job that is launching himself into the air and she gratefully accepts my offer. I get her on Sam and then work on getting the nutjob to stand still and stop launching forward so I can get on. Once on, I realize that Sam is now quite pissed that he is not going to get to run or even trot even a little bit on this outing (90% of the time, trail rides for Sam are endurance training which he dearly loves). He's too good to do anything bad but I explain to the girl that she should just sit quitelly and half-halt him every so often and he'll behave himself. Aside from the few side steps, he was a perfect gentleman the whole way home, though quite miffed with me. Nutjob, on the other hand, required much more work and attention. At one point, when launching forward did not get the desired riderless result, he tried running me into a tree. this is when I switched to "You wanna prance and throw your weight around? Fine! You gotta work for it!" So we did traveres, renveres, passage ... but it worked. He finally decided I wasn't giving in and mostly calmed down for me. *Le sigh* we all came home in good form, though both girls thought the 45 minute ride was quite harrowing (the other girl was riding the sweetest, safest pony.) and tiring. Not the outing I was looking for.
We get back and I'm discussing this incident with a friend when she brings up some valid points that I knew nothing about. 14 yr old's parents weren't even at the barn to know she was going out on the road with a new horse. Nutjob, while a wonderful show horse, has apparently acted this way on a trail before ... and the girl knew this! She didn't tell anyone that her horse might act up, she just decided that maybe he'd be a puppy dog this time. But what really gets me (because we all know that as little girls we sometime want to put reason aside and do it anyway *grin*) is that the 11 yr old's mother was at the barn and has witnessed nutjob's trail antics before and didn't say a word to anyone. WTF? I mean, if you were a parent wouldn't you say something? Geez. Just makes me shake my head.
Now, I hope I don't offend anyone, because I know there are young people who are very competent riders that can handle very difficult situations ... but, in general I don't like taking anyone out who is less than 16 and pretty advanced. At least not on the kind of trails that I ride anyway. It would be a lot different if we were riding on a big farm with fences and wide, flat or slightly hilly terrain that wasn't too long.
So, Saturday. I arrive at the barn keeping my plans to trail ride with my buddy Judi. It's raining lightly and her horse is new to the trail riding bit, but she decides we can handle it anyway because Sam, my horse, is a pro. We get ready to go and suddenly we have an 11 yr old and a 14 yr old, both novice to intermediate riders, joining us. Grrness. Should have just said what I was thinking right then. 14 yr old is riding a horse she doesn't know very well yet (he's a new purchase) and neither girl has been out longer than 30 minutes. This is not what I signed up for. I intended to be gone at least an hour, we'd be riding along busy roads at least part of the time, and there were some good galloping lanes assuming the footing wasn't too bad. We'd at least be trotting quite often. At least, that's what I had in mind. We get out on the road and things start out just great until we get down a grassy lane. We all decided to trot down the lane, at which point the new horse loses his little horsey mind! the girl gets him under control (it was really quite admirable considering what a jerk he was!) but is obviously nervous and worried she won't be able to control him. I offer to switch from my fun and fantastic pony to the nut-job that is launching himself into the air and she gratefully accepts my offer. I get her on Sam and then work on getting the nutjob to stand still and stop launching forward so I can get on. Once on, I realize that Sam is now quite pissed that he is not going to get to run or even trot even a little bit on this outing (90% of the time, trail rides for Sam are endurance training which he dearly loves). He's too good to do anything bad but I explain to the girl that she should just sit quitelly and half-halt him every so often and he'll behave himself. Aside from the few side steps, he was a perfect gentleman the whole way home, though quite miffed with me. Nutjob, on the other hand, required much more work and attention. At one point, when launching forward did not get the desired riderless result, he tried running me into a tree. this is when I switched to "You wanna prance and throw your weight around? Fine! You gotta work for it!" So we did traveres, renveres, passage ... but it worked. He finally decided I wasn't giving in and mostly calmed down for me. *Le sigh* we all came home in good form, though both girls thought the 45 minute ride was quite harrowing (the other girl was riding the sweetest, safest pony.) and tiring. Not the outing I was looking for.
We get back and I'm discussing this incident with a friend when she brings up some valid points that I knew nothing about. 14 yr old's parents weren't even at the barn to know she was going out on the road with a new horse. Nutjob, while a wonderful show horse, has apparently acted this way on a trail before ... and the girl knew this! She didn't tell anyone that her horse might act up, she just decided that maybe he'd be a puppy dog this time. But what really gets me (because we all know that as little girls we sometime want to put reason aside and do it anyway *grin*) is that the 11 yr old's mother was at the barn and has witnessed nutjob's trail antics before and didn't say a word to anyone. WTF? I mean, if you were a parent wouldn't you say something? Geez. Just makes me shake my head.