Pearl
As I mentioned in a couple other posts, I have started to ride horses again here in Scotland. When I left California last year for uni, I knew I would have Pearl, my mare, waiting for me at home when I got back. That meant a summer full of riding, so I wasn't too worried about not riding during last school year as I knew I would without doubt be able to ride all summer. Flash forward to the end of last summer: a few days before I left for Scotland again saw me standing in the driveway of the barn waving to the trailer slowly disappearing from view. Just before it was out of sight, I heard Pearl's whinny from the window, which I chose to interpret as her goodbye. I had to sell Pearl because no one was riding her while I was at school, and, as hard as it was to sell her, it was much harder to think of her whiling her days away in a stall while I was having fun over seas. Now, she has a pasture to run in and a herd to play with, so she is better off I think. But, I digress. My point here is that, since I don't have a horse waiting for me at home this summer, I wanted to ride more while I am here in Scotland.
So, last semester, I put out an ad saying that I could help exercise horses, and one woman answered saying she had an Arabian gelding that needed exercise. Well, when I got to the field, I realized that she had not been entirely truthful. First of all, her horse was not an Arab, at least not fully. I don't really care what kind of horse it is I ride, so I wasn't at all upset that the horse was in fact a pony, it was only the fact that she had misled me which bothered me. The breed of the horse was the lesser of the two facts she had misled me about, though. It turns that this horse was barely broken - I couldn't ride him, and he would barely longe. I was still willing to try to help train him, but after going up to the field once a week for a couple months, I had made little progress. I tried discussing a training program with her (I'm not at all a professional trainer by the way, I was just going on my past experience to try to help this horse) but she didn't really seem interested in merging our two schedules to work with him, telling me instead to just take him out and do whatever I wanted to with him. Needless to say, this wasn't really what I had in mind when I said I could exercise horses, so after Christmas break I came back and sent out a new add, this one to the SERC (Scottish Endurance Riding Club). I received a response from a woman there saying she needed help exercising her Icelandic mare, who had done endurance in the past, and when I went up to meet her I found a very nice woman and a very nice horse that was not only rideable, but also very calm and willing to do pretty much anything - perfect.
Ro, the first of the Icelandic horses I rode
I have been riding that horse and a couple other Icelandic horses up there for the past month and a half, and last week I had a ride experience which I wanted to share here. This post was meant to be just a quick recap of the ride, but obviously I had to more to say and just didn't realize it, so you get a background story leading up to the actual event.
Here is the ride story:
My steed for the day was an Icelandic called Ess. He is bigger than the other Icelandics I've ridden (he's maybe 14.2 or 14.3 instead of 13.3 hands... for size reference, Pearl is 14.3 hands - see photo above) and a deep, dark brown. He is solidly built - a little hulk of a horse - and steady. He is a pretty easy ride - I was told by the owners that if any beginners show up wanting a ride, they pull out Ess. Essentially, it seems as if he is bombproof.
This was made clear in the beginning of the ride. We headed out of the stable and made our way down the road (yes, we walked straight down the center of the road and through a tiny Scottish village - just a few houses, it seemed to me). As we were walking down the road, a call came from the rider behind me - "there's a great massive lorry coming behind us!" So we all pulled over to the side of the road and looked over our shoulders to see an eight wheeler grain truck trundling slowly (and loudly) down the road towards us. Now, if I had been riding Pearl, she would have definitely had something to say about the truck - at the sound of its approach, she would have started to tremble. Her sides would start heaving as she blew her concern, warning me, I assume, of the approach of the monster clearly coming to get us. She would then start dancing back and forth, no doubt wondering why I wasn't giving her the ok to take off at a mad gallop and flee the terror steadily approaching us, her warning huffs gradually becoming louder and more urgent as it got closer, head tossing, eyes rolling. As the truck came level with us, she might have wheeled around, still shaking, looking for somewhere to run to get away from it. I would barely hold her, trying to calmly talk her out of her fear, as it passed. As it drove away from us, Pearl would settle, still shaking, and probably shake her head, as if saying, 'we were lucky this time, but next time you'd better let me run and save us.' This exact scenario has happened countless times in the past. Ess, however, didn't even look at the truck as it passed us. In fact, of the three horses there, the most adverse reaction any of them had to the truck was to ogle it. Ess flicked one ear towards it and then slowly ambled after it down the road once it had passed. He literally was not bothered at all by the truck. I was amazed.
A few short minutes after that, we were walking down a slightly busier road, the main road leading out of the village, and coming down a blind corner when an army green jeep covered in tan army style tarpaulin came roaring up the road towards us. Upon seeing us walking down the shoulder of the road, the driver promptly slammed his foot onto the accelerator and blew past us at speed, which, by the way, is incredibly rude to riders. As I watched the cloud of exhaust and dust settling behind him, the riders I was with shook their heads in disgust, saying, "oh, there's the farmer again. He should know better!" I was astounded - a farmer? A farmer was the one who blew past us like that? The story came out gradually: in Scotland, all land is open, so riders are allowed to ride anywhere they want, basically, as long as they shut gates behind them. So, they can ride over private estates, for example, because, though the building is private, the land is public. Apparently, this farmer didn't like riders riding across his land, and so would take his petty revenge by doing things like speeding past them on the roads. This scene brings to mind scenes from the show 'Monarch of the Glen', if anyone has seen that. Anyway, throughout the fiasco of having a jeep fly past us, engine roaring, wheels spitting gravel at us, and smoke blasting out of the pipes, Ess, once again, looked at the jeep with mild concern (probably thinking something along the lines of, 'well, someone's in a hurry'), but other than raising his head to see it didn't react. Amazing.
We continued on our ride without further incident until we reached a steep pavement downhill. The others dismounted, saying that they would walk their horses down the hill as it could be slippery and their horses were young, but that I could stay on because Ess was fine walking down that stretch. So I rode on ahead while they walked behind, and near the bottom of the hill Ess started to try to turn off the road into, as far as I could tell, a forest. I tried to encourage him to stick to the road, but he kept trying to turn into the forest, so I stopped him and waited for the others, thinking that maybe he knew the way home and I didn't and we were meant to take a turn in. Once the others had caught up, they continued walking on past me, saying, "oh, that's the BMX park, Ess loves it. It's fun, if a little bumpy. Go on in and we'll meet you at the bottom." I was a little stumped - first of all, I'd never heard of a horse who loves BMX parks and so was unsure how to proceed, and second of all, I didn't know where we were or where the bottom was/where I was supposed to meet them. So, I did what I considered to be the smartest thing - gave Ess his head and hung on. He set off at an easy trot into the forest, which, I quickly saw, was indeed a BMX park full of steep bike jumps. He started to run over the jumps, not really jumping them, as they were too close together for him to gather his legs to clear, but just running up and down and up and down and up and down. I got into a two-point in the stirrups and just let him run his course, and it was over before I knew it - we had come out of the forest and onto the bottom of the road, just in time to see the others walking serenely down the final stretch to meet us. I had had my first horse BMX experience, and can't wait to do it again! That was my longest ride in Scotland to date, a ride of lorries, angry farmers, and BMXing horses.
Oh, and the best thing about Ess? He is afraid of purple flowers.