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[PZ]

Good to know - thanks!

I ride an Arabian, which is a good horse, but appears to be skittish compared to others, which appears to be genuine. I had an Arabian, an Appaloosa, and a Paint (for real) a couple of decades ago, and for sure the Arabian was the most nervous even though he was a gelding.

[Art Blade]

I can relate.. although I never owned horses, I rode them. If I'm not mistaken, it was an Arabian that I rode only once. It preferred to trot really fast and avoided galloping almost at all costs. I mean, I guess I'd have overtaken a guy trotting that fast while he was galloping, that sort of thing. I preferred gallop. Well. On our way home, it was so keen on getting back to the stables that when we were close to them it wouldn't even react to me any more and it ran straight into the stable.. through the bloody narrow door that was supposed to be an entrance for the personnel. There were even a few steps leading up to that door.

I think the door frame or perhaps the wall would have knocked my block clean off my shoulders had I not ducked and shifted my body to one side of the horse while being almost glued to the side of the horse's neck (just like in some Western movies) so I wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb and fit through that door on horseback and it was really fast when passing through that door. That was the only time I was really nervous and I decided to leave that bastard to the other guys.

Well, one other event springs to mind which was about equally "exciting." The horse I was riding in a forest suddenly decided to jump over a tree log AND the ditch behind it. That was a bloody huge jump.. it looks so easy in movies but being on horseback yourself while the horse is performing that type of stunt, especially when you weren't prepared for it, feels like you're in a high speed car accident and I was really focussed on staying on that horse rather than sailing off into the sun and back down for a spectacular faceplant.

So I preferred a massive and tall breed, calm and friendly. Tall as in, I really had to pull myself up into the saddle. I think it was about 17 hands (68 inches / 173 cm) tall, or close to. The back of my favourite horse of that type was as big as a sofa and I've never, ever experienced that kind of speed again that I experienced when I was galloping with that horse through forests and across vast valleys. I'd literally have tears in my eyes.. both from the headwind and from the bugs along the way that thought it was a good idea to enter a headbutt contest with me

I mean, try to visualise that from an insect's point of view. You're bumbling around casually in the warm sunlight, enjoying a mild breeze smelling of flowers and berries where the lush valley ends and in the shadows the forest begins.

Then, softly, a rolling deep grumbling sound that quickly evolves to a bellowing sound of thunder. It is like a wild, fierce roar that rips through the air, caused by the giant hooves of an even more giant horse, beating the earth like a war hammer hitting an anvil. Big as a mountain, tall as a tree and fast as the wind it breaks through the tree line and comes bombing down an invisible and frighteningly short path that leads straight to you, chunks of soil shooting up in the air behind it.

The creature is neighing with glee and steaming like a kettle, and high up on the back of that monster is a young guy, bouncing around with every beat of those pounding hooves, hollering at the top of his lungs to the rhythm of the hooves, totally in sync with the horse when BANG, he hits you in the head.

Your life ended rather abruptly and brutally as your head connected really, really hard with that bloke's face, and the last thing that crossed your mind, was your own arse.

[PZ]

 

Excellent story, especially the bug part!  I never had quite the adventures in jumping that you had, and my favorite was the Appaloosa, which was a very mellow old chap and liked to walk but not run. 

[Dweller_Benthos]

The most experience I ever had with horses was a kid on my grandfather's farm who still used horses to do farm w0#k like cutting hay or hauling stuff in a wagon. Sometimes he or my Dad would toss me up on their back and let me ride along as they drove the wagon from behind me. Being good w0#k horses they were pretty big, and no saddle as they were hitched to the wagon, but the collars and other stuff used to hitch them was enough for me to ride on, the short distance from the field to the barn.

[mandru]

Fun story about your riding experiences Art.  If you hadn't concluded the end of the bug's impact narrative (the last thing to go through its mind) I was prepped to add the punchline. 

I too think that I would prefer larger horses (having had a nightmare experience on a Shetland with a Hackamore bridal ) but then again I've heard that mules by having a completely different set of smoother gates than a normal horse they've been likened to being the Cadillac's of riding experience.


As to my experience with horses I received a 2 year old pinto when I was 7 and had him until I was 14 or 15 at which time I sold him to local farmer that wanted to use him for trail riding and hunting.  When I rode Lucky it was very informal.  I never used a bridal or saddle.  Riding him consisted mostly of lounging around on his back and pretty much letting him wander where ever he wanted to go around an 8 acre holly tree orchard he was pastured that was owned by an agreeable neighbor who was happy for free weed and tall grass control.

When I chose to direct our roaming it was accomplished largely by slapping him one side of the head or the other but he would only put up with just so much of that guff.  When he'd get fed up with me he's attempt to scrub me off his back by walking directly through one of the holly trees or try to snag one of my legs by skimming closely along the 3 strand barbwire fence at the orchard's boundaries.

When I was 18 I had gone fishing in one of the oxbow lakes that dotted the valley below where we lived and spotted Lucky with three or four other horses in an adjoining field.  I whistled at him and he trotted over.  It was good to see that he was freshly re-shod and was being well cared for.  With the richer farmland pasture he'd bulked up and looking a lot better than he had eating the low grade forage available in the holly orchard.

[BinnZ]

Nice stories chaps! I regret never having rode a horse in real life. I think it would be a cool experience. The closest experience I had with horses was petting them on the nose and feed them old bread with my parents. I was always scared it would bite my fingers, which never happened

[Art Blade]

nice story, mandru I wonder what that "nightmare experience" was, exactly

Riding a horse bareback is both a pleasant experience as it lets you feel the horse's warm body and every muscle and move of the horse through direct contact and a bit difficult, too. Harder to stay on top, especially when going a tad faster.. and not as comfy as in a leather saddle that's padded and all that. I did ride bareback but preferred the full gear.

I too enjoyed letting the horse do what he liked while being taken along on the ride, kind of. But the huge horse I mentioned was also a pleasant partner. When I made just a slight move with my feet to tell him I wanted to gallop, he'd instantly go into full gallop. He loved that kind of "finally someone unleashed my power," too

And I can tell you, full gallop on that horse.. it made my heart beat quite a bit and it was an adrenaline rush because it felt like what you see in a rodeo show, it was always lifting me up and almost out of the saddle and then plummeting back down hard and getting lifted up again and so on, it was hard to pinch myself to the horse not to fly off hahaha, and boy, falling off at that speed and from that height you'd be toast for sure.

However, I've never fallen off a horse nor have I ever been thrown off.

Feeding a horse with your bare hands.. just bend your fingers away from the horse's teeth so it can pick up the food from the palm of your hand without biting off a few digits of your fingers, and it's OK.

Can you guess which parts of a horse I like the most, to touch and fumble and gently rub just to feel them?

Spoiler

The ears.

and yes, I know the post looks funny if you ignore the spoiler.

They're warm and soft and smooth as silk to the touch, and when you're familiar with your horse and it allows you to play with them, it's just too funny and at least "my" big horse liked it a lot, too

[mandru]

The nightmare Shetland experience was when I and the two brothers that lived on the property next door were visiting a family that lived nearby and had several horses someone came up with the idea that we should saddle up and take a ride up past the local cemetery and explore some of the web of utility roads (access to the high tension power grid as well as high volume water lines supplying Seattle municipal water) that wrapped back over the top of the hill we lived on and back into the valley behind our hill.

there were 6 people in all for 5 normal sized horses equipped with proper tack and 1 Shetland Pony named Tony.  Yes, Tony The Pony.  Really "The" was officially his middle name.

I was the largest and heaviest among the group (Art! I'm not counting the horses  ) so someone thought it would be funny to assign me the Shetland and instead of a proper bridal with a bit they equipped him with a Hackamore which basically boils down to a leather flap over the nostrils the when you pull back on the reins to slow or stop the horse it covers their nasal air passage and forces them to obey.

The creators of the Hackamore never considered that Shetlands are stubborn little cusses and are able to maintain a full gallop at their kidney busting choppy gait by ignoring the Hackamore and breathing through their mouth. 

We were 4 or 5 miles into the maze of access roads when my mount caught a wiff of something they didn't like.  It could have been any one of a number of things that spooked Tony.  There were plenty of mountain lions, bears,  wolves, and coyotes that lived around us and were frequently sighted.  But what ever it was Tony stopped short stiff legged and without warning spun and bolted for his home stable.

There was about 8 minutes of him in a plunging gallop where he ignored my every curse word and attempt to regain control.

Most of the time I was standing in the stirrups hauling backwards with my full weight (200+ lbs) on the reins ineffectively as he was mouth wide open huffing and heaving like a locomotive as he ploughed homewards.

In that head on gallop of 8 or so minutes he managed to undo about an hour and a half's worth of ground that we had covered at a slow amble.  It wasn't until we (Tony and I that is -- the rest of the group was miles behind us) reached the paved road at the cemetery front entrance that Tony slowed.

I was lucky that he didn't like galloping on the blacktop road or he probably would have lost footing and hurt or killed both of us.  Nevertheless he slowed to a determined trot and didn't come to a foamy mouthed and sweaty stop until we reached the gate for his pasture.

I knew better than to slip him him through the gate without tending to him and walk on home so I led the nasty little canker up to the owner's house and tethered him to a fence pole and alerted the parents of the girls we were visiting to let them know what had happened.  They apologized and were pretty angry that the girls had used the Hackamore bridal on Tony and then giving him to me as a mount saying that was a particularly mean dirty trick.

[Art Blade]

I just gave you 3 (three) thumbs up because you told it, told it so well, and man, it was so funny I had to pause in between in order to laugh properly

It was brilliant, start to end, but what made me laugh the most was "that Shetlands are stubborn little cusses and are able to maintain a full gallop at their kidney busting choppy gait by ignoring the Hackamore and breathing through their mouth." oh man

GREAT story, mandru, thank you so much for sharing

Somehow that type of gallop reminds me of my experience with the big horse, only it was likely a smoother gait than what you described and in my case, it was voluntary.. I wanted to race with that horse. However, it was still close to "kidney-busting" the way it made me bounce in the saddle

Also, isn't it funny how they know where their home is and how they seem to see it as something where they're safe and where they like to be? When I talked to my horse and said, "now it's time to go home," it must have been a key word that actually meant the same to the horse as to me: the stable. So whenever I mentioned "home," I was in for a horse race with almost unlimited power and speed. No need to try to get it to gallop, the horse was instantly on auto-pilot mode at full engine power and using every known shortcut including jumping over fences. It was more like a jet flying too low than a horse, setting off every radar speed check for land-based moving objects on the way back. Crazy

[Art Blade]

That's good to know - I have heard my horse making strange sounds and acting nervous, but never discovered the source of the problem.

One thing I forgot to mention: your horse is sometimes simply telling you that it's a bit dirty. That's still way before the warning lamps start flashing, showing you a red brush inside the health circle. Kind of cool Hop off, brush it a few times and the horse should stop "talking" to you for no apparent reason.

[mandru]

Thanks for the thumbs up Art I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I was concerned that it would be too long and rambling.


On the subject of horses.

A barman noticed that a horse was coming into his pub 4 or 5 times a week and ordering a bucket of whiskey.  The horse's money was good, offered amusing patter and the horse behaved itself so at first it didn't worry him too much but after a few weeks he became concerned for the horse's health.

One night he asked the horse if he thought he was becoming alcoholic.

The horse responded "I don't think..." and immediately vanished.


This is clearly a play on "Cogito ergo sum" but if I'd led with that info I would have been putting the Descartes before the horse.

[Art Blade]

that's pretty funny, mandru, and deep

As to stories, I don't mind reading long stories as long as they're entertaining. And I'm a fan of details, anyway

[fragger]

Wonderful stories, gents

I can't add anything noteworthy to your marvellous equine tales, except one - actually, my only one.

I was in my very early teens when my big sister talked me into accompanying her on a horse ride in a large inner-city park in Sydney called Centennial Park (similar to New York's Central Park in terms of its proximity to the CBD but about half the size and without the rectangularity). There was at the time a horse-riding business which conducted controlled (and boy, do I mean controlled, see below) and supervised rides around the park.

I had never been astride any living thing in my life (and wouldn't be again until a few years later when the girl who lived a couple of doors down showed me a thing or two), but sis made it sound like it would be oodles of fun, so along I went.

Well, it turned out to be pretty darned boring since anything more brisk than a leisurely amble was forbidden, and galloping was utterly out of the question. We also had to go as part of a group of about a dozen people, and this soon-to-be deflated assemblage of sorry city-slickers was presided over by one of the most obnoxious women I'd ever met and who I'm sure was a former concentration camp commandant who had eluded the Allies by riding a draught horse over the Alps and escaping to Australia at the end of the war. She had a resting face of barely-suppressed disapproval and seemed to be perpetually irked by the contemptible greenhorns who had the effrontery to plant their coddled bums on the backs of her horses (even though that was the business she had elected to get into). She never stopped barking orders at everyone in what sounded to me like some sort of Eastern European accent, which lent itself well to her Bitch of Buchenwald persona: "Shorten zose reins!" "Zit properly in your zaddles!" "Don't get zo close to ze horse in front!" and so forth. She scared all the ducks out of the pond half a kay away. Honestly, my drill sergeant during basic training bellowed orders at me in more dulcet tones.

So all we were allowed to do was plod along in a strictly regimented fashion around the roughly circular road that occupies the bulk of the park whilst being berated non-stop by Himmler's sister throughout the entire tedious slog. The whole experience was about as much fun as undergoing a cavity search.

But the crowning moment came when we stopped halfway around at a drinking trough for the horses ("Shust two at a time, no more!" "You zere, iz not your turn, you vait!" "Zit ztill, you vill upzet your horse!") When my turn came, I dutifully nudged my mount up to the trough, and I swear blind he was waiting for this very moment to exact retribution for my fumbling attempts at horsemanship. The other horses had, without exception, lowered their heads gently to the trough to drink - but oh on, not my boy. He threw his head down with such vehemence that he caught me unawares, and I began to fall forwards along a trajectory that was surely calculated to land me in the drink. But he fooled me again, interrupting my fall by the brutal expedient of throwing his head back up with as much velocity as it had when it went down, thus head-butting me back into my proper place in the saddle. I'm sure he did it on purpose - he didn't even take a sip, as far as I could tell at the time. I was too busy marvelling at the stars which had suddenly appeared in broad daylight to give it that much thought until later.

Naturally this fiasco triggered a barrage of furious admonishments from Mrs. Reichsmarschall, which did little to alleviate my acute embarrassment, or to salve my throbbing forehead, which was rapidly acquiring a new contour.

We completed the circuit without further incident, heroically enduring ceaseless chastisements from the Horse Hollerer, who I'm sure everybody in the group would happily have ordered a hit on (including my crestfallen sister, who actually apologized to me later for talking me into it. She'd had no idea who we would be dealing with). I haven't ridden a horse since. Not because of that experience - well, maybe a little - but simply because the opportunity never presented itself. Now that I'm living in the country, there are a number of places nearby where I'm sure I could have a ride without any browbeating taking place, but I can't see myself doing it again at this remove. I don't think I'm cut out to be the Marlboro Man in any case.

That was my one and only horse adventure. The only things I'll consider climbing onto the backs of nowadays are motorcycles - those I can handle with a degree of aplomb, and they don't premeditate. I'd rather the horsepower remain inside an engine block instead of trying to brain me.

[mandru]

fragger maybe that wasn't a shining experience for you but it did make for a fun read. 

Also it was cool to see that you'd added a couple new pictures to your Renderosity account. 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sorry, guys, Fragger has the best story, I'm afraid! LOL! 

Now about this neighbor girl......