Horse Sense

I've been out of range. We went to a dude ranch in Oregon. The Big K ranch near Elkton. Oh my God, I had fun, but I couldn't tell you about it then because I didn't have phone service and I didn't want to just sit in the lodge for the wi-fi. I had stuff to do, riding, fishing, shooting, eating, and talking. I'll get to telling you about the shooting later. Now that's a story unto itself. I'm going to tell you about MC, my temporary horse. And Mike's horse Claude and Nick's horse, Jack.

It's official. I am not a horse person. Oh, I like horses. I really do. I like feeding them apples, now that I know how, and the long grass on my side of the fence. I like grooming them with that rubber zoom groom thing that my cats love so much. I like patting them on the neck. But I don't have such a good track record with riding them.

When Nick said he wanted to go to a ranch to ride horses, I started to get a little nervous. Okay, maybe it was a lot nervous. A whole lot. First thing when we got there, Kathy asked Nick what he wanted to do. "Ride a horse and shoot a gun." So we scheduled horses for Saturday and shooting for Friday. If you end up going there, and I highly recommend that you do if you can, you should check every morning about your schedule. They're kind of laid back about it and we ended up riding Sunday instead. I have to tell you, I was so nervous about riding that I only got three hours of sleep Saturday night, but I really didn't want our vacation to get away from us without riding. I could say it was for Nick that I wanted it, but that would be a lie.

Right after a hearty breakfast, we headed over. My horse was MC. He was a big horse with his brown and white fur mixed all together, whatever you call that, and he was very soft. I decided not to tempt the fates and asked for helmets for Nick and I and a footstool to get up. It turned out the MC really wanted to know what I wanted him to do. He was like that dog that just wants to understand what you want. MC was perfect, except that he kept turning when I held the reins the wrong way. "MC, honey," I whispered to him, "I don't know what I'm doing. Can you just take the reins here?" He even figured that out, the sweet guy that he was.

Unfortunately, Nick got Jack and Jack wanted to tell everyone what he had decided to do. Nick had to be towed the whole trip, but he was cheerful and happy to have gone when we finished.

Mike was riding Claude. More than once, we all stopped because Claude was having a snack. I didn't know that horses liked scotch broom. So when we began to climb a hill, Quinlan told us to lean uphill to help the horses. Every other horse sort of galloped to the top, getting some momentum. Claude just walked along, heaving. It was funny. He was a beautiful horse, but when we got back to the corral, he went for the pile of apples as if he hadn't eaten in a week. He was that guy who dribbled food while he chewed and talked with his mouth full. We all liked Claude. In fact, we each liked our own horses the best, even Nick.

So I have survived another adventure on a horse. I just might try it again sometime.

Thank you for listening, jb