Trails of Sand and Mud with Deerflies

Since our weekends are going to be taken up with festivals and camping with our "non-horse" friends, we thought we had better get a ride in. It was last Saturday, and the temperature was a bit cooler, with the hot weather expected to return soon, so we put off all the Saturday chores and headed out to the Indiana Dunes.


I have referred to the Dunes as the State Park and the National Lakeshore in my blog....it is a bit confusing. We do have an Indiana Dunes State Park and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. I am pretty sure the riding trails are part of the National Lakeshore. You would think I would know by now....not that it is terribly important, but I should be accurate.


Anyway, we did make it out there for a ride. Talked with some nice people who were saddling up at the same time as us, and hit the trails. We have had a lot of rain lately, so there was a bit of mud. But I am proud to report that Zora only hesitated for a minute or so at the bridge which has the giant mudpit at the end of it. In the past we have been on that bridge for 10 minutes trying to get her to cross. This time, she was much more brave. Good for her!


The deerflies were just horrible. I spent most of my time looking at the back of Divna's head and ears and leaning over to squish deerflies. I even left some of the dead ones in her mane hoping that other deerflies would see them and not want to risk the same fate.


It didn't work. The Indiana Dunes deerflies must be of the same mentality as the WWII Kamikazi pilots, or our modern day Suicide Bombers. In spite of seeing carcases of their comrades, they would land on Divna and try to bite anyway. I killed as many of them as I could.

Since I didn't take my camera, and I hate to post without pictures. Here are a couple that I took back in June.


Here is my Divna drinking water....to me she is so beautiful!















Here is John and I -- I was holding the camera and trying to get us both in the picture. John's face looks enormous here....






This was taken after a ride, so you have excuse our grubby appearance.

Talk to everyone soon, in the meantime, Keep Riding!!

P.S. John has a new post at http://www.theotisrules.blogspot.com/ . Check it out - his writing is pretty entertaining!

Too Hot and Too Buggy to Ride

I looked at the date on my last post and was amazed at how much time has gone by!! It has been just too blasted hot and the bugs are too bad these days for riding. But I do have some catching up to do here, so here goes.

Don't ever wear a white T-Shirt for riding. This is how I looked on our last ride before we ever got The Girls loaded into the trailer!!!

We did ride earlier this month (or was it late last month??) with our friends Paul and DeeDee. Paul just got a Tennessee Walking Horse, so now he has a gaited horse like the rest of us (his wife DeeDee has a Rocky Mountain). We all met at the Dunes and rode those trails. It was a really nice ride -- the 4 of us actually rode together, now that we are all gaited. Paul's horse is just so handsome -- really tall and nice looking. DeeDee is in training for the Michigan Shore-to-Shore ride. I believe she has done this ride before, at least part of it, and she says it is really a nice ride. It goes across Michigan at the point where Lake Erie (I believe -- I can't find my map to check it right now) is on the east, and Lake Michigan on the west. It takes a few days to do and they camp out, etc. She keeps trying to get John and I to do it, but the time factor is a problem. I don't have a lot of vacation time, and with other constraints it is just not really doable for us. But I am impressed that she can do it, and we look forward to hearing the stories and seeing the pictures once she gets back. Here's Paul and DeeDee on their horses at the Dunes.

John finally got rid of the truck we had and got one that has a bigger engine. Now hauling the horses is much easier. The other truck had a mechanical problem (again!) and that was the final straw. He is really happy with the is new truck, and is kicking himself for not doing this a long time ago. Here is a picture of his new ride...Pretty cool, huh??

On a really sad note -- a woman that we have ridden with in the past, and one that DeeDee has ridden with quite a bit lost her husband to a freak accident recently. He was cutting a tree and it fell on him. So horrible. I did a post with pictures of her and her horse last fall -- she has a Tennessee Walking Horse, too, and we rode at Bluhm County together. It was the day we had about 7 riders out here at our house. We are so sad for her. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers....

My Most Recent Ride - Proud of Divna

Divna is not a dominant horse -- Zora rules the pasture at our place, and Divna just goes along with whatever Zora wants. If Zora wants to finish Divna's grain, it is OK with her; if Zora insists on the first to get treats or attention from visitors, it is OK with her. In fact. when people visit, Zora runs up to the fence for the petting and attention, and Divna hangs back. She is completely comfortable letting Zora have the spotlight.

She also freaks out when she doesn't see or hear Zora for a period of time. On the trail, if we get separated, she comes unglued (no pun intended) if she loses sight of Zora (also no pun intended-- Divna only has one eye) after three minutes or so.

So I was really, really proud of Divna on the last ride we took.

We were at The Indiana Dunes, and met Dee Dee and Karen for a ride. Of course we never saw Dee Dee and Karen -- they left a few minutes before us, and were riding the trail backwards, which always screws us up.

Once back at the lot after our Separate-But-Together-Ride Dee Dee realized her shirt was missing. Not the only one she was wearing (relax, men) but an extra one she had on her saddle horn....She knew where she lost it -- on one of the curves just before getting back to the trail head.

She was already back with her horse, so I boldly said "I'll go back for it!" And off I went -- taking Divna down the trail alone, just the two of us!!

She was OK for about 2 minutes. Then she started getting nervous. I kept talking to her and moving her along, all the while looking for the lost shirt.

She started getting upset, started calling out for Zora. I kept talking to her and pressing her along.

Then she was beginning to get more upset, but I kept comforting her and urging her on. Surprisingly she did do very well. We found the shirt -- she stood still while I dismounted and retrieved the lost article of clothing. I got back on her, turned her around, and she knew she was going back to where Zora was. She was obviously really, really happy.....

But I did not let her run, even though I could tell that is all she wanted to do. We kept a good pace until we met up with Zora and John and Shawnee and Dee Dee who had followed us onto the trail.

It was just great that Divna made such a breakthrough like that! You have no idea...this is a horse that was afraid of everything when I first got her -- a horse that cannot bear to be more than 20 feet away from Zora....she walked down that trail and retrieved a shirt...

I LOVE HER!!!!!

Chinese ???

Is anyone else out there getting comments in Chinese?? I have been afraid to click on the link to the person who posted the comment -- I did one time and it looks like a prostitution site for Asian women....not sure what is going on here. Could it be a virus type thing??? Does anyone know what this is all about?

In Praise of Mares - Not Missing The Storm

We have been out to the Indiana Dunes to ride the trails the last couple of weekends, and of course, there is always something to talk about afterwards. To me that is what is so neat about trail riding -- it is always an adventure of some sort. Even if we are just going for a short ride on the trails near our house, something always makes the ride unique -- sometimes scary, sometimes funny, sometimes just a bit more interesting.

A couple of Saturdays ago, the day looked beautiful in spite of the weather channel warnings that storms were headed our way. We looked outside at the blue sky, felt the perfect temperature, and then looked again at the weather channel and its green blobs headed our way and agreed -- "What the heck! Let's go anyway. We will be done riding by the time the storm gets here."

Sure, we would have been thru the trails before the storm got there. The day was still beautiful when we arrived at the Dunes and began grooming the girls and tacking them up. The day was still beautiful as we admired a new truck in the parking lot, then met the owner as he came back from his ride. It was still beautiful as we stood there talking trucks and horses for about 45 minutes.

He was riding a mare, and we talked about how some people say mares are so awful. None of us could understand that -- our mares are great!

It was still beautiful when a husband and wife came out from the trail, also riding mares, and stopped to talk. It was the first time we had been to those trails when every horse there was a mare! There were only 3 trucks and trailers in the lot, and we were all there in the parking lot together and we were all riding mares! It was so neat!! The husband and wife do some training, and said that they would rather train a mare than a gelding -- they said that mares learn faster (no surprise here -- females are smarter!!). In fact, they own 5 or 6 horses, and they are all mares. So it was still beautiful as we stood there feeling all "mare superior" and talking for another half hour.

Finally we started on our ride, and there were some grey clouds overhead. We get almost all the way thru the trails, we were about 3 miles out, and it started to rain. I mean really rain. Thankfully the Dunes are pretty wooded, so we were not getting soaked. But I could also hear thunder..... So we picked up the pace. It was not long until John and Zora were way ahead of Divna and me.

I got to one point on the trail where it comes to a "T" -- to the right takes you back to the parking lot; to the left takes you back out on the trail. I had a premonition that John and Zora went off to the left. Somehow I just knew it.

Sure enough, when we got back to the parking lot they were not there. Once in the parking lot I could see there was lightening with this storm. I did not want to be out in the clear and take a chance of becoming a lightening rod. Also, out in the open like that I was getting soaked, so we went back in a little ways onto the trail to wait for John and Zora.

Divna started getting all nervous being without Zora. It seemed like eternity until they showed up. Sure enough, they took a left at the "T" -- John got mixed up, so he let Zora find the way back.

We waited under a picnic shelter until the rain subsided.

All in all, a pretty good ride!!!

Tippecanoe State Park

We are fortunate that Indiana has parks close by that have horse trails. Tippecanoe State Park is about an hour or so drive from our house, and they have riding trails and a horseman's campground. We don't like to camp there, because the horse camp does not have shower facilities -- and they are almost militant about horse people going over to the family campground to shower. Let's face it, if you are around horses all day and riding the trails you definitely need a shower at the end of the day. It is pretty poor planing of the park system not to recognize that. We decided if we ever do go there to camp again, we will pay for a camping spot in the family campground, set up our extra tent there, and make it look "occupied" so we can go and take a shower. John is going to write a letter to the state parks department and let them know about this situation, but he hasn't yet. At any rate, we went there last weekend for day riding.

It was a nice day, and there were lots of riders there. We have only been there a couple of times, so we don't know the trails. We got a trail map, which is really sort of a joke for us. We can never follow those things. In Indiana they print the trail map in green, so it is just a lot of squiggly green lines on the paper -- we always get lost and the map never helps. But this time we met some people on the trail who knew where they were going, so we rode with them. I was proud of our Girls -- they are getting so much better about riding with other horses. Zora was even content to be last in the line, and Divna didn't kick any of the other horses. They were very well behaved, and I think they enjoyed it.

They were really nice people, and as it turns out, live in Northwest Indiana, too. So it looks like we may have some new people to ride with. After the ride we sat around the picnic table near where we were parked and had snacks and cold drinks. We talked for the longest time -- it is so neat to meet other horse people like that. We are really looking forward to going riding with them again. They know of some places in Lake County where we have never ridden before, and we hope to meet them at the Dunes or have them out to our place to ride the trails around our house.

It was a great day and a lot of fun. The best money we ever spent was on our horses....having them has provided us with so much in terms of entertainment and meeting great people.

End of The Idiot Saga

Note: If you have not read the previous post, this one will make no sense......



So the First Idiot says to the Second Idiot "What do you think?" (Doesn't really matter which of us is the First Idiot and which is the Second Idiot)



Second Idiot, "I think we will be OK. What about you?" First Idiot "Yeah, I think so too. The parking lot shouldn't be too far from here, and our horses are really good."



First Idiot "OK, then. Let's go"



So there we go, down U.S. Highway 20 (key word there is Highway). We were on the north side of the road, so we were facing traffic, which was probably for the best. There was a pretty large space of grass on my left, highway on my right. Just beyond the grass was a barbed wire fence, so there was no getting over any farther away from the road. All was well until a ditch appeared.



Divna is missing her right eye -- so her blind side was to the road. But her sighted side caught sight of that ditch, and she did not like it one bit. It was full of water, and I am certain it was not very deep, but it may as well have been the Pacific Ocean. She did not want to go near it, and kept trying to get over to her right -- right into the road. It was a struggle to keep her over to the left.



In the meantime, John and Zora are ahead of us, going at a steady pace in pretty much a straight line. I was happy to see that....one less thing to worry about.



We rode for what felt like forever. Most drivers had enough sense to move over into their left lane to give us space. Some drivers were as big of idiots as we were, and stayed in the right lane, even when the left was empty!! At one point, Divna's back end started drifting onto the street, right when a car was in that lane. That is a moment I will never forget.



Did I mention semi-trucks use U.S. 20? And that there is a train track that runs along the south side of the highway?



I was starting to realize exactly how stupid of a move this was. Not just for us, and our horses but for innocent drivers on U.S.20. A real tragedy could have unfolded there that day, one that could have impacted so many lives, all because of our stupid decision.... That is what bothers me most of all about this, and what terrifies me if I give myself a chance to imagine what could have been.



As it turns out, we got back safely, Thank God.



One day after work I drove our little detour-route. It is almost exactly one mile.



The next weekend we went to Tippecanoe Park in Winamac and rode the trails there. We met some really nice people, and had a normal ride.