Bogs trap trucks AND!! a Horse Trailer ONE MILE IN on West Bragg equestrian trail - different!

Here's another report emailed in from a regular and adventurous couple riding backcountry, who encountered this interesting situation at West Bragg the other week. The recent heavy rainfall has some serious bogs and muskeg here, even on the extremely extensive 'new' trail plan being developed and this combination of a truck and horse trailer adventurously up past say three boggy areas and a good mile and a half, say, along an equestrian trail were all up to their axles.

Be interesting to listen to what K-Country conservation officers and the trail building specialists have to say on this one, eh - ??! Here are the comments from the riders' email: "Here are the pictures we took yesterday while on a day ride at West Bragg. You can choose whichever one you want. I believe the sighting of the trucks and horse trailer is on the “Iron Springs Trail”. You would reach the site before you reach the man made gate. I’m guessing the gate would be about 1 kilometre further south."

Feedback on the TOM SNOW TRAIL.........

This entry will be posted on 'Trail Updates' at www.pamasheton.ca in a day or two but for those of you heading to the foothills here's a report emailed in from a backcountry rider rated on the Intrepid-Plus scale (!).

Here goes: "We rode Tom Snow from Dawson last fall (Sept and Oct) and it was lovely. All the deadfall removed, some new sections of trail and we really motored. I love that trail. If you want to ride it fast I’m in, but walking that thing would kill me [see what I mean? - the Queen-of-Speed, grin]. On Tuesday last week we rode Tom Snow from Station Flats and again it was in good shape.

And for the blog, the bridge on Wildhorse has been repaired (by Howard Creek) and is highly recommended. We tried the old alternate way to the west of the bridge on the way back and the bog is really nasty now. Whoops, judgement error on my part. Did I mention the moose????"

Good Trainers are Goldust

Back during the five years I crafted the Equestrian Diary column for my local newspaper the Cochrane EAGLE beginning in 2002, I wrote just about everything related to horses. Blanket repairs, shelters (a unexpected favourite that one!), horse behaviour…….and clinicians.

A LOT of clinicians. The horse ‘whisperers’ known across North America, Canadian home-bred versions, specialists, generalists ……. in the end I just about out-clinicianed (not proper or correct English but it’s the most apt way I can think of describing the situation!) and many of them near talked-you-to-death.

I can remember interviewing participants on a couple on those Master World Talkers' courses who, frankly, went into mental hypnosis overload by the end of day two. Oops, when you’re dishing out fairly serious $$$, eh - ?

Many clinicians were amazing, some had moments, most were superb horseman, others were superb horseman but lousy teachers (I can remember attending a British clinic given by an Olympian I had waited, dreamed of for months and she couldn’t have taught a donkey to trot – an unbelievably disappointing day where I had anticipated all my cross-country questions would be answered succinctly, like before breakfast).

There are born teachers, as there are rare naturally gifted athletes, and those you can teach to teach, or to ride who have to work, work, work to find all the right tools, muscles and independent balance (right up to Olympic, I know, I’ve taught that deal).

And, last weekend, B.C. based Jonathan Field breezed through five blisteringly hot days with humour, very real interest in every single individual human and horse during both Horsemanship 101 and then 102….. and then Jonathan atop a chance ride on a big bay gelding with just a tad of attitude showed me three very neat techniques that went into my mental “could be useful” drawer.

They were, too, just a mere two days later! Isn’t ‘coincidence’ just wonderful - ?!

Jonathan was teaching at Patty Martin’s Twin Springs Ranch (tel 403-932-7817 or www.twinspringsranch.ca - the website’s still developing). The ranch’s atmosphere’s positive plus here and they specialize in competent pasture boarding, with both indoor and outdoor arenas – plus immediate access to wonderful backcountry trails.

Patty and Jonathan, I know, were talking about the possibility of another clinic later this year

Listening...........

Horse language is the language of the flight animal, you know, the one that gets chased and chomped as seen on the Discovery Channel. To really get horse-think it's a bit useful if you sit and watch horses at pasture, big horse herds, those kind of dynamics.......

Something that, initially, seems inexplicable may suddenly click a brain cell. What horses do loose they'll most definitely click into, under stress, when ridden. Obvious really, that one!

Like this morning here, when The Best, as alpha as they get, decided the back pasture (where the water is) was highly dangerous. The ferocious high-headed dragon's snort and her three companions cascaded to the very furthest eastward line of the corral's fencing around the back of the shelters and the old red wooden barn.

Watching through the kitchen window, I sighed, heaved on four layers, lumbered outside and filled up the ancient sliced-in-half propane tank (alias their water tank), tidied up a bit.

Nope, they weren't moving. Glued, high headed, adrenalin high, along the corral's ancient timbers.

Another sigh. Grab a halter and slid it onto the white girl and led her into the horse eating back paddock, a tad exasperated at how seriously she takes her herd guarding responsibilties at times.

The others followed, slid up, one at a time, drank deeply and then began picking, still a bit snorty, at the hay piles I'd organized.

She and I stood there, we've been together now a decade and more than any other, she's taught me horse-think subtleties. I breathed slower, my feet imagining they were tree roots and thought peaceful thoughts, idly drifting through why she was so revved up and guessing her one big fear factor, moose, were in the thick thick western woodlands nibbling on willow branches.

The raven couple, in their prime and stunningly blue-black against the hoar frosted trees, croaked their odd warning language and the white head went up again. Something, definitely in there, and the ravens croaked and cawed and flew around before, finally bored, circled away further up the valley for more morning amusements and diversions.

So, still she and I stood there, me waiting again for the white head to go 'level-headed' (see where the expression comes from?!) and then, ah, magic.

A huge bald eagle, really massive wing span this boy, flying straight up the Horse Creek Valley northwards, my first viewing this year of the earliest arrival perhaps pathmaker of their annual migration of bald and golden participants that's a documented 11,000 years old. They, hawks and many others, follow the ridgelines of the 'shining mountains' the far more appropriate name given by native people to the 'Rockies'.

The mare, finally, dipped her head, deigning to slither in a few morsels of sweet meadow hay. And then, with their ironic cosmic humour, the Land Gods said, I am imagining, OK, The Human's being a bit perceptive this morning so let's give another little gifting. In the far wood came a faint rattling drum of a woodpecker drilling but the mare, this time, twitched just an ear with a muzzle now deep in timothy and fescues .

And the very first of the young male ground squirrels popped his head out of a burrow, scampered across to the fenceline and, carefully perched erect atop the crusted snow, surveying the bright sparkling world of springtime-just-around-the-corner.

Supple. Horses AND humans..........

Working with a new competitive minded rider the other day, halfway through the session they started to laugh. I glanced across, questioning and quizzical and they exclaimed, “we were told you were expensive.”

Not, as they hastily explained, for value for money for the session time itself but because about, I am reckoning, a good 90 per cent have a saddle that simply doesn't fit (so, yes please, buy another saddle that does), and usually the horse is as crooked as hell besides so in my opinion, what's the point of running a marathon if you can't touch your toes - ?

In the past I've been crunched big time by horses, plus one major skiing number and almost three years back a whiplash number on a wet veterinarian's office floor. I thought I was pretty clued up on getting back to functioning but that day's soft tissue injuries opened a whole new bag of, er, a learning curve which, sideways, can be applied to horses too.

With movement comes core strength and elasticity, without it, one displaced rib or hip alignment just compounds into everything going out of whack.

So yes, I advocate chiro work but not the kind where you go back, week after week, month after month. Nope, my girls (the horse fixer and the human one too) get it in one or two sessions, max, and then after that it's conditioning work.

The Colorado clinician Mark Rashid (his book HORSEMANSHIP THROUGH LIFE runs totally along the same line of thought, you end up with a different – and supple – human being after he takes up the mental and physical discipline of martial art training) seems, uncannily, to run and write along similar railway tracks of parallel thought sometimes to my own. Ah, the old synchronicity thing again.........

Chiro work, saddle fit and if you click onto his website at www.markrashid.com and then onto his blogs, there he is covering my thoughts almost exactly, onto issues on slaughter and the latest, about teeth and TMJ and jaw flexion.

Nowhere near mountain fit or any type of competition fit level, my appaloosa The Fox has hit major I-am-very-happy horse-time. Conformation wise back at the knee, finally again his feet are balanced just right. He had chiro work done about two months back because he'd 'braced' himself for so long because of the jar and displacement correspondingly in his shoulders and tightened up in the stifle big time. And, finally decided he likes one bit after six years of trying nearly everything under the sun! He rides on rein pressure as light as feathers, he's tracking up, punch! from behind and the shoulder and stifle are smooth and supple on the circle with 'self-carriage' – ie, self balancing. THIS is the basis of great classical foundation work, wherever you end up riding.

And, on that note, a great classicist who follows along the line of the great Master Nuno Olivero, is giving a talk/seminar at Weedon Hall. His name's DOMINIQUE BARBIER and for a book of insights – and stunning line drawings – please, treat yourself to his just gorgeous DRESSAGE FOR THE NEW AGE.

No Foot, No Horse

That heading, that expression, is centuries old and it's absolutely right. If, though, you're reading this blog for backcountry advice in deepest Louisiana (I had a call from Oregon last week, if anyone fancies ranch backcountry time down there and a beautiful website too) this locally based blogged information, to-within-say-50-miles-radius of Cochrane, Alberta probably won't be much use (at all) to you. Smile.

But to a rider (and their horse) a perfectly balanced good foot is a big deal. Trimming, shoeing, all take expertise and given that horses have different shapes, different shapes of feet then experience kicks in.

The angle that somehow just seems right, the heel elevation, shoes for cross-country eventing (with stud holes, try unlocking the studs afterwards from their screwed into the drilled holes that are threaded, when your 1200 lb athlete is prancing around high on adrenalin.....). Character forming, definitely, that one.

And then for this snow-laden province right now, another ton of options. Ditto racehorses with aluminum plates, show jumpers landing hard down from 5' elevations. Ponies knee high to a grasshopper where your core back muscles need to be super-flexi.

This kind of expertise comes from the experiential. This means your farrier has done it. Preferably lots and lots and lots of times, over years. Someone that notices how a horse may not like holding up one foot in a certain way and thinks lateral about why, or why the skeletal frame may be out of kilt, these experts are worth gold dust.

My own horses (near Cochrane) are now benefitting from the skills of a young man, Bryan Schoures, who's headed west for the love of a good woman (and now girlfriend), and building a business where multi-talented horses are part of the deal. Poor man, he even listens to me yakking on about chiro work done the week before on, say, yet another tweaky horse, which leg, or shoulder. Neat thing is, he also translates that into a horse with a tight stifle, or a shoulder that's had injury.

And. My! The horses definitely pick up on that thoughtfulness.

On a colt with a seriously low attention span in a Chinook wind one afternoon...... the speed those feet were trimmed - and trimmed well - had the colt not quite realizing he'd even picked his feet up. I didn't time it but it was at world record speed. I had to grin that particular day at the colt's amazement, mine and Bryan nonchalently taking another layer of clothing off from his orginal four thermals.

So, for a personable young man, experienced, who knows to handle horses with respect, trims and hot-shoes, his name's Bryan Schoures, his email address (it's the Blackberry thing) is bryanschoures@yahoo.ca - and (cellphone of course!) is 403-613-5770.

The Best's Christmas gifting to you

Relationships with horses in my life have always been working affairs – partnerships that took me competing cross-country courses, slithering scree slopes researching or for whatever competition best suited that particular horse. 'The Best', the now pure-white mare who features on the front of the backcountry guidebook, is undeniably the most difficult horse I've ever re-started. Hot-headed, angry, she was probably the first horse that I couldn't 'see' where she was going to shine. At all.

The backcountry trails and something-to-do, a purpose, eventually changed her. Immeasurably. My idea of hell, right from when I first ever swung a leg over the back of a horse, has always been 'to go out for a ride.' I may school horses in arenas or those apparently pointless circles on wind-blown prairie wool pastures but in the back of the mindset is always something to be geared towards.

To my way of thinking my horses pick that up. Really! Flatwork to them, whether we're on a trail practising balanced transitions from trot to canter, or a still halt to pirouette around a gate fenceline, becomes a means to an end – they know the winter indoor arena work is only a phase, a partnership being fine tuned and then, oh joy! there are jumps or trails or fastwork.

Joy's an important number to horses. Spoken praise to young horses, neck rubs that, as relationships mature, become a sly scratch on the wither even in midst of a difficult dressage test as an acknowledgement, a thanks for a movement well executed.

Gratitude. Joy. The two trot together.

To 'The Best', carefully named as I was asking Fate to make sure she would be the best at something as yet unknown, I owe much. An equestrian column that ran for five years in which she often featured. A guidebook where her ears, often photographed from the saddle, are always pricked and where she even hammed up looking down a rock slide apparently horrified, that she'd nonchalently been down 20 times before.

She's been used in demo-work since for horse language simply because her face is unutterably expressive – 'I am happy,' 'I am darned annoyed,' 'this Small Person is standing in exactly the right place'........... there's never any doubt what mind-frame she's in and for that she's priceless.

And, on winter's night a few years back, she woke me up, so strong now is the telepathy between us. Personally I get a little tired of women romanticizing their relationships with their four-leggeds these days but the bond with the white mare and myself is not that.

It's a respect, a trust hard earned. So, here is her and my Christmas gifting to you – I wrote this small short story, that most difficult of writer's disciplines straightaway after, so almost surreal did it seem. No editing, just straight as it happened.

“Coyote teaching.........”
“Midnight, a whisker before. I wake up, the kind of wideawake with no dreams still lingering. The barn's yard light is on, casting shadows across the old Turkish rug. I fumble for spectacles, none that I can locate in the darkness and right now I want no turning on and off of electric lights.

Binoculars, from bird watching down to the water meadows, are on the old Victorian pine table. Gratefully I flip off their covers and focus through the window. The white mare, sharp as ever, has her head up and scanning; I follow her gaze and for the next five minutes there is enchantment.

Two coyotes dancing on the lawn. Feinting, circling, front paws asplay and crouching, a look cast sideways across a shoulder. The mare's head is up but I notice the frosted plumes of her breath are steady and slow. “No threat just right now,” drifts into my mind from hers and but I notice she has blocked her body between the coyotes and her stablemate appaloosa still picking at hay snippets from their late night feed.

The coyote pair slam dunk, roll over each over, then stand, face to face and noses a whisker apart. One leans forward and licks the top corner of her mate's mouth. They grin, panting foolishly, join shoulders and minds suddenly decided, trot briskly toward the darkness and the creek.

In the morning I stop on the way to the barn and there in the snow are their tracks, a dance still.”


Copyright Pam Asheton @2010