Our Honorable Hunters and the Pain-in-the-Butt Tree Huggers

Let me know when you've got the nerve to jump something this size

Everybody knows white boys can't jump and when you get up into my age, its tough just bending the knees..........

Those horses just seem to do it without even thinking about it don't they? The last time I rode a horse (30 years ago?) it cleverly rode me into a low lying branch of a tree..........The horse and the gal I was with certainly got a big kick out of that.

LOL!

Depends on the horse, they have aptitudes for different things. Since we're a combined training barn, we wouldn't have a horse in our barn who couldn't jump or didn't like to jump.

Properly trained, a good hunter can get himself into "the spot" (the place on the ground in front of the fence that is the optimum place for the horse to plant his hind feet for takeoff, so that his path is a nice smooth parabola not making contact with the obstacle!) A good rider is supposed to assist his horse in getting to the spot. My mare and I have a cooperative effort, I can usually see the spot about 4-5 strides out, then I either check her a little bit or urge her forward so that she meets it. She is very adjustable and she trusts me to put her in the right place, if I'm distracted by something she can find it on her own, but we work better as a team. Sometimes she'll shake me off like a pitcher refusing a catcher's sign, and I offer her another option. (This all happens really fast!)

Horses have a sixth sense about when somebody is a beginner and not really master of the situation . . . then they will rub you off on trees or take you under a low branch, if they're the mischievous type. On the second date I went on with my husband, we went riding with another couple at a local rent-a-horse place. The usual sorry and sour horses you get when all sorts of people are on and off their backs all day . . . my horse and I had a short sharp argument and she decided it was just simpler to do what I asked her to, but the other three had never ridden before and their horses were carrying them off into the woods, rubbing them on trees, etc. I wound up pulling a branch off a tree and riding herd on the other three, whomping the horses' butts with the branch whenever they misbehaved. My horse kinda got into it and thought it was great fun . . . and it's a total wonder and miracle that my husband ever asked me out again! (would YOU ask out a banshee that spent an hour rushing back and forth on a wild-eyed grade mare, yelling and swinging an oak branch around? Me neither!)

LOL! No hard feelings!

Any customary or "official" dress looks odd to the uninitiated. But we don't even notice, because everybody else is dressed the same. It's like going to the Highland Games - we have one locally, and we have always gone, since B.C. (Before Children). Since we are Scottish Country Dancers and used to be on the Demo Team, we always go and hang about the dance platform and help make up the sets.

When my son got to be 8 or so, he complained about wearing a kilt to the Games because he 'didn't want to wear a skirt'. I explained that (1) a kilt is not a skirt, brave soldiers wear them; and (2) if he wore trousers to the Games, he would look like a tourist instead of one of the men. That mollified him substantially.

And of course once we got there and he fully realized that Everybody who was Anybody was wearing a kilt too, he felt quite proud.

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