Deciphering Egyptian Horse Charities

 It's that time of year again and again I have people emailing me asking for advice about helping Egyptian horse charities and other animal charities. We have a few charities here of varying levels of transparency and competence, but perhaps if I lay out the general scene a bit, it will help people to make up their minds about which one or ones they feel comfortable with. There are a number of charities on Facebook, some of which have quite a lot of supporters who provide a lot of monetary and emotional support for them. People who have decided that they are staunch supporters of a charity have their choice already laid out so this essay isn't really intended for them. Right at the beginning, I wish to state that I administer a charity that provides free veterinary care for everything from pigeons to camels for the small farmers in our area. I don't think that we would, in any case, qualify as a "horse charity" since horses are pretty expensive and most of our famers can't afford them. So while some people might call "conflict of interest", I have to say that we draw our support for the most part locally and we really aren't in the race at all.

One of the first things to understand about horses in Egypt is the fact that the vast majority of them are working animals, not someone's pet. You will see horse drawn carriages in New York City or perhaps Paris, but in Cairo you will see horse drawn wagons and donkey carts even in downtown Cairo. Most cart owners own just one horse or donkey and the family's entire livelihood depends on this animal. Unfortunately, the owners are often at least semi-illiterate, having left school at an early age and there is little written material on the care and keeping of horses available anyway. In rural areas, horses, donkeys and mules are equally as important for transportation and hauling as motor vehicles. Many of the rural tracks are just mud trails and are entirely unsuited to the sorts of cars (ie, cheap ones) that farmers can afford. There are horses who are kept by families for riding for enjoyment, polo ponies for playing polo, jumpers and dressage horses in schools and race horses who run in Cairo in the winter and in Alexandria in the summer. But these are rich people's sports and are very much in the minority. There are also about 600 private Arabian studs in the country whose horses are generally bred for halter shows and who are unlikely to ever be ridden or worked in any way, unless they are unpromising stallion colts who may be sold to whoever is willing to buy them. There are more of these horses entering the general horse market these days as, just as is the case everywhere in the world, feed costs are skyrocketing, and uniquely in Egypt, horses cannot be exported from our country to anywhere else in the world except perhaps Jordan, due to a conflict between the official vets in Egypt and the veterinary authorities in Europe and the Gulf. Bluntly, Egypt has been blacklisted as a horse exporting country. It is still possible if you can arrange a quarantine in Jordan, but this costs an arm and a leg. So despite a world that is less and less horse friendly in terms of costs and upkeep, people continue to breed them, bringing prices further and further down and causing a glut on the market.

For people who live in the US or Europe where it's a common thing for people to own a trailer to move their horses around, it will come as a surprise that in a country with so many horses, donkeys and mules there are probably less than 300 horse trailers in total, meaning the sorts of things that will hold 2 to 4 horses and would be drawn behind a car. Thinking of the fancy living quarters trailers  or vans? Think again. There are less than a dozen, if I'm being optimistic, but probably less than half a dozen in the country.  Most horse transport is either done in the back of a pickup truck or, for people who can afford it, in a horse van that you hire for a particular trip. These can carry perhaps half a dozen horses at once, making them more reasonable in price if a group of horses are going somewhere.  The vast majority of horses (like my own) get everywhere they need to go on their own four feet.  When people talk about transporting horses in Egypt, they are usually talking about the big horse trucks that have no air conditioning (an important point in summer) or pickup trucks. To load a horse, mule or donkey into a pickup, generally the truck is backed up to a pile of sand or dirt or just a high place and the the animal is encouraged to get on. There is no such thing as training for this experience because horse owners don't have a rig to  train with. Frankly, it's a wonder that any  horses ever go anywhere here, and my old mare Dory steadfastly refused to have anything whatsoever to do with transport, necessitating a walk of 12 km across insane Egyptian traffic to have surgery once. She was 21 at the time and the vet agreed that simply trying to get her on a trailer would probably be much more stressful than the traffic, since she was an ace at going anywhere a horse shouldn't normally go.

Living quarters for horses in Egypt are often imagined as being sunny paddocks but the geographical necessities of a country of almost 100 million people jammed into land the size of the Netherlands dictates quite a different life. Egypt only utilises about 5% of its land, with the other 95% being empty desert filled with sand, rocks, and some desert animals. There is no water or electricity out there, no roads, and most of it is owned by the military anyway.  Virtually all of our farmland, cities, highways, and people are jammed into the inhabited Nile Valley for the most part.  Paddocks and turnout are almost nonexistent and the spaces involved are most often the size of perhaps two nice box stalls. Virtually all horses in Egypt are kept in boxes because this is the easiest way to keep a large number in a small space.  My farm is an exception to that rule because I decided early on that less is more. I keep 24 horses only in paddocks, and have no room for any more, while friends who were dropping by to comment on my building when I started out pointed out that I could have 80 horses if I put in the normal boxes. They also told me that my horses would either die of the cold in the winter or have heat stroke in the summer, but having grown up in an area of Southern California where there was much more empty land available so most horses were outdoors 24/7 and the weather was colder in winter and hotter in summer than Egypt, I knew that was rubbish. There are huge variations in the quality of boxes in Egypt. Some places have huge roomy boxes if the owner has plenty of money and knows a bit about the social life of horses. Many of the stud farms have barns where the mares and foals have boxes where they can look out over the walls to talk to their neighbours. But the majority of horse stalls are not nearly so nice and the area of Egypt that gets the most attention from charities and often from visitors, Nazlet Semman, the area of the stables near the pyramids of Giza, could be a poster child for how NOT to care for a horse. It is a very crowded area with a human population probably pushing about 60 thousand of homes with shops on the ground floor and living quarters above or with stables on the ground floor. Land is at a premium here so most places tried to fit in as many boxes as possible, and they often are tiny, more the size of a walk-in closet than living quarters for a horse. There is little air movement and no space for storage of hay or other forage. Bedding varies from rice straw for the lucky horses to wood shavings to sand to bare concrete.

To say that Egypt is heaven for horses would be silly, but it isn't all hell either.  What it is, however, is a place where people and animals both have to work hard to live, much like life almost everywhere in the 1800's and still much like life in a lot of parts of the world that are not in North America or Europe. The horses in the Nazlet Semman area are used for touristic purposes to a certain extent, but locally the area is known as being Egypt's largest horse market where young horses are brought in from the provinces, saddles of dubious quality and provenance are slapped on their backs, and hapless tourists ride them with virtually no training in the hopes that someone will buy them for an extremely healthy mark up. Likewise, the pyramids stables are often the ultimate resting point for horses who are at the end of their working lives but whose owners need to sell them to get a replacement. The main problem I see with the stables there is that they have a very impractical business model that is based on buying cheap and selling dearly. There is little or no concern for care, maintenance, or training of the horses. Most stables in the area would be delighted to have 10 young horses come in every month and 10 be sold every month. They've always made most of their money on sales. The problem with this is that horses being bought and sold are being kept for the quick turn around, so there is little incentive to invest in the horses, as far as the stable owners see. In a place like my farm, Al Sorat, where horses stay until they die, we  have them around long enough to train carefully and, to be honest, it isn't worth my time and effort to sell my horses given that many of them are considered "old" in Egypt (that is to say, from 15 to  25 years of age), although they are fit and healthy, because in the first place they would never fetch much of a price unless I lied about their age (a very common practice elsewhere in Egypt) and even more importantly, should I sell one for what the training is worth, I'd never be able to buy another of the same value in terms of training.

Inasmuch as much of the attention in horse rescue organizations is on the stables in Nazlet Semman, unless they can change the business model or mind set of the stable owners, there is no real rescue to be done. The Egyptian economy is pretty much in a state of free fall, most of our people are either unemployed or underemployed, and prices are rising steadily. There aren't that many possible buyers for horses and those that there are usually find themselves totally shocked at the costs of feed, veterinary care and boarding. Then to completely kill the thrill, the traffic in Cairo is such anymore that to imagine that you can complete a day at work and then drive out to the stable a few times a week to ride is simply laughable. The rescues that work in the area, the Brooke, The Egyptian Society for Animal Friends, The Egypt Horse Project, and Prince Fluffy Kareem, for the most part, are doing first aid. The Brooke has hospital facilities in mid-town Cairo and can do surgery for horses who need it, but at the end the horse will still go back to its old life. The Egyptian Horse Project and Prince Fluffy Kareem essentially do the same thing with feeding, hoof trimming, minor veterinary care and providing a place to rest for a while, but there are no "forever" homes waiting out there. The horses either have to stay there (which means that new horses will find no places) or they go back to their old lives, such as they were.  The Egyptian Society for Animal Friends has a feeding program that is helping to feed some of the pyramids horses, but it is not an easy job. It only reaches a certain percentage of the horses and because most horse owners in the area don't have any  place to store our local hay (dried berseem clover), they have decided that feeding hungry horses dry forage, rather than being one of the best ways to get healthy calories into them, is a bad idea and they just want to feed grain in whatever quantities they can afford and a bit of fresh berseem or grass as forage. Not a healthy model at all for horses who are working.

To be realistic, most animal rescues here are misnamed. Some of them take in dogs or cats to "save" them from a life on the streets or in the countryside...but there are very limited numbers of people who will adopt from a shelter when you can get a free puppy or kitten in the street. So many of these animals will live out their lives in cages with perhaps plenty of food but no freedom. Personally, I find the warehousing of animals repellent. Egypt has a lively ecosystem, both urban and rural, and while as someone who likes cuddling up to a cat or dog as well as anyone, I hate to see them running the risks of being hit by cars or poisoned or killed by a predator, I also realise that the removal of dogs and cats from our ecosystem causes imbalances in it. For thousands of years the Nile flooded the valley every year for four months, often to a depth of two or three meters, which had the additional blessing of drowning all the rats and mice in the valley, or sending them into the low desert where foxes, birds of prey, dogs and cats had even better luck in hunting. In essence, every year the exterminators came to Egypt and when the High Dam in Aswan was built, one of the truly horrific side effects of stopping the inundation was the fact that the rodent population skyrocketed. Egyptians had never learned to live with rats and mice year round, and to compound the problem, we have an African rat, the Nile rat, which is a completely different species although almost indistinguishable from the rats that the entire world know and do not love. So the existence of stray dogs and cats is actually extremely valuable, especially in our cities where trash disposal is not exactly stringently enforced. It would make much more sense to have trap, neuter, and release programs with vaccination components than it does to have buildings full of animals in cages.

So, in conclusion, you need to consider what you think is an appropriate outcome for an animal charity. ACE Luxor runs a nice little hospital/recovery operation in Luxor that helps both the working animals of Luxor and some of the farm animals as well. The Brooke extends through Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Esna, and many of the touristic areas of upper Egypt as well as working in the brick kilns where most of the hauling is done by young men with donkeys and mules alongside the Donkey Sanctuary who work on an outpatient basis with farmers and brick kiln donkey crews. Their work is important and it's done well and thoroughly. In addition, the Donkey Sanctuary has a program whereby they will train young men in the villages in basic trimming and health care. Both of these used to be tied to the parent charity in the UK and a donation for Egypt was simply tossed into the larger pot, but they have changed their structures and can now accept donations specifically to the Egyptian Brooke and Donkey Sanctuary. Both charities have pages on Facebook with contact details. The two informal charities in the Nazlet Semman area are as yet unregistered in Egypt and each being run by an individual with only a few  helpers they are of lesser effectiveness, although many of their followers seem to enjoy the endless streams of pictures of ill and injured horses that appear on their Facebook page. One of the drawbacks to each of them, aside from the issue of organisational structure, is the fact that as they are run by westerners whose concept of rescue has been shaped by other realities like the concept of a "forever home" there is a bit of a mismatch with the culture here. Egypt has its problems in terms of animal welfare and many other things, but personally I'm inclined to believe that the solutions will also be found by Egyptians in their own fashion.

I hope everyone has a good holiday season...whatever your holidays may be...and I hope this has helped a bit to make the charity situation in Egypt a bit clearer and more real for everyone.



copyright 2013 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Birds of a Feather

 One of the things that I truly love about having horses who are well-socialized is watching children learning to communicate with them. The horses are especially gentle with them. This girl and this young mare were special friends.

copyright 2013 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Obstacle Course

 I have to laugh when friends of mine complain that their horses spook at mail boxes or something like that. I wish we had obstacles so simple. But mine have had to learn to walk next to a dredge clearing a canal or next to a noisy diesel cement mixer with a bucket that rises slowly to the top of a building....and then drops very abruptly. Or as was the case this morning, both of them next to each other. Note the attentive ears! But to their credit, while they eyed the monsters carefully, there was not a foot out of place.


copyright 2012 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Bombproofing R Us

Everyone who rides lives in fear of the grand spook, that heart-stopping, muscle-wrenching moment when your horse looks ahead, says "What on earth is that? It's going to EAT me!", spins and bolts. It really isn't fun, and the older you get the harder the ground becomes. When I began taking clients out riding, I knew that I had to have horses who would not do the grand spook for anything. Happily, I have the perfect place to unspook horses...the Egyptian countryside.

Most people who ride in Egypt do so in arenas if they are training for jumping or dressage, or they ride in the desert for pleasure. The desert is nice and empty...seriously empty with only sand, rock, and the occasional rider or ATV. So the horses in the desert get used to seeing nothing very alarming. They don't have to work in a confined space as it is the Sahara after all and you can ride ten people abreast at 2 meter distances if you like. So most horses are a bit taken aback in the countryside. But I had two horses who needed 6 months of rehab on hard ground and the countryside was the only place to do it. It was an interesting 6 months but well worth it. Once I'd gotten them past the heebie-jeebies, they made excellent teachers for the others.

The photos accompanying this post were taken by Kelly Anderson on her rides around our area this summer while I was laid up with knee surgery. They illustrate some of the training objects that we use for bombproofing. A horse drawing a cart is of some concern to most saddle horses. "Is that what happens to bad horses who spook and spin?" "You betcha, toots. Look carefully." The man with the lethal ice cream cart is more of a physical danger to the kids buying the ice cream but someone climbing halfway into a brightly painted box pushed by a bicycle is definitely suspect. And the tuk-tuks! Those little covered tricycles with huge boombox music blaring out of them! Definite horse eaters.

The trails in the countryside run alongside the irrigation canals and the farmers often use diesel pumps to transfer water from the canal to the fields. When working the pumps put out a powerful stream of water about 6 inches/10 cm in diameter. The farmers are very obliging about turning off a pump that is projecting across a trail so that we don't have to get soaked, but encountering a diesel pump being hauled by a donkey on a narrow trail is a sure sign that the horses are going to slow down rather than rush up behind something that is suspiciously coiled and jiggling.

The alternative form of water transport is almost as horrifying as the diesel pump. This is the sakia, a form of water wheel that is donkey powered. Of course, donkeys are not stupid and will not voluntarily walk in circles for hours so the farmers blindfold them, often with objects that look like reject props for a Madonna concert. A still sakia is no cause for alarm...but a sakia that is being run by a dangerous punk donkey definitely rates a second look.

Then we have the final, most dangerous countryside object...the dreaded crake, or dredge. With millions of kilometres of mud-sided canals to keep working, a number of backhoes with broad scoops work 24/7 cleaning the accumulated silt and whatever out of the canals, also broadening them where the sides have slipped in. To their credit, the horses have learned to walk carefully past the dreaded crake as it rests quietly by the trail (the operators are very cooperative in this regard), past piles of slippery smelly mud until we can feel the sighs of relief as the monster is left behind. I have on one occasion tried to ride past a dredge in the dark of the night when the strong halogen lights affixed to the long arm throw enormous beams of light into the darkness. Suffice it to say that discretion is the better part of valour and we returned along our original path. Some fights simply aren't worth it...and I thought it was pretty spooky myself.

So if you really want to bombproof your horses, just drop us a line. We can pack up some of our wonderful neighbourhood spooky creatures just for you. The European storks that no longer seem to migrate north in the summer are already fairly mobile and standing up at about 4 feet with an easy 6 foot wing span, they can certainly take care of any avian issues. Happy to help.


copyright 2010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

On Losing a Dear Friend

Last night a very special horse died. He was eight years old, the son of my oldest equine partner, Dorika, and the grandson of her best friend, Nimbus. I have a number of horses twenty years old and older, horses that one might reasonably expect would die before a nine year old. But Figgy (Fagr) just didn't have that luck.

Figgy was a total surprise to me when he was born. I'd been disappointed when my mares both gave me colts, but when Nimbus' son managed a sneaky pasture breeding to Dorika after my husband died, I was delighted. He was a social, adorable friendly soul from the first moment. The first day of his life he came out to visit with children, dogs and everyone like he'd been around forever. When he was about four months old, however, we had our first cause for concern when his hind legs began catching as he tried to walk around. We had the American orthopedic vet see him and found out that he had subluxated patellas in the hind legs. We either had to do knee surgery on him or be ready to put him down when his legs locked up at about two years old. We did the surgery and he recovered very well, growing into a tall, athletic horse.

At four we began riding him gently and he spent a few years only working with the grooms and myself until we were sure that he could be safe for clients. We had a few adventures as he was growing. He spent some time not being quite sure where his legs were with the result that he and I ended up swimming in a canal one day during a trail ride with friends. He was the only horse I ever had who fell into a canal. I had to swim to one side of the canal to get out and he swam to the other, following us along the canal until we could come to a place where we could meet up about a hundred metres down the trail. I'll never forget how he called to me when he could see me in front of him, cantered to me and then stopped resting his head against my chest in relief at being reunited. Just a week later he tripped in a small ditch and he and I did a wonderful show of being horse and rider in a tumble drier...happily no one was ever hurt.

But lately he'd learned where his legs were and we began entrusting clients to him. We'd warn them that the enormous energy they could feel under them when they got on was just his natural collection and enthusiasm for life. He was wonderfully responsive and responsible. I don't believe he ever ran off with anyone. At the fastest gallop, the rider only needed to pull up a bit to say "Let's slow down here a bit" and he slowed immediately. He was a huge favourite, especially with teenaged girls.

Figgy adored his mother and brother and they lived together in one paddock, a happy little sub-herd among the larger herd. If one of them went out on a ride the others called out to him or her on his/her return, and they were happiest when all three of them got to work together. Figs' huge, huge walk was a joy to me and made him a great group leader because we could be walking out in front while everyone else was trotting to keep up.

The last time they went out together was just before I traveled for 10 days to see my kids in New York. Despite the fact that they were just ambling around the countryside for an hour, the next day they were running fevers and had runny noses. My farm was hit hard by a strangles epidemic in the area. While I was gone, his brother Nazeer got a huge abscess under his jaw (a complication of strangles) and when my ordinary vet couldn't be reached, another one recommended giving the horses an antibiotic, something that I never do with strangles. When I got back everyone seemed to be recovering ok, but suddenly about 10 days ago, Figgy was much, much worse. He seemed to have symptoms of laminitis, lumps were appearing in places on his body where they really shouldn't have been, and he was having problems breathing due to a nasty abscess deep in his throat. I had a good vet come to see us as soon as possible and he gave me the horrible news. Figgy's odds of recovery were maybe one in ten, but we could try with a new strong antibiotic. We did and he had the best nursing in the world, with massages, healing, cooling baths in our very badly timed heat wave...everything.

Yesterday morning he was nose deep in the bathtub where we soak our beetpulp and happily snorting water from his nose, a sign that the abscess in his neck has shrunk considerably. He was walking much more comfortably, and we were all delighted. Hopefully we'd beat the odds...but the odds beat us. Late last night he showed signs of serious distress and I could see that it was the end of his fight. I called my vet and then drove over to get the Big Blue Needle that would help him to find some peace. Figgy was a fighter to the end, but it wasn't right for him to go through so much pain. Jack told me that probably either an abdominal abscess had ruptured or there had been a cardiac embolism that had broken loose. Peace was the last gift I could give him.

Somewhere in the ether the souls of our horses meet up. He's with his grandmother now. She passed on some seven or eight years ago at over 30 years of age. But there are a lot of souls here missing them both terribly.



copyright 2010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

An Eye Opener

Part of owning horses in Egypt is having friends come to experience the extreme pleasures of riding in the Sahara or through the villages of the Nile Valley. I love my visitors and get a special thrill out of showing them my Egypt. So when my old friend Laurie wrote to me to say that since she was retiring she felt that it was time to come riding with me, I was delighted. She told me that she'd be bringing a friend and that the friend was blind. Now that would be interesting. When I suggested that we could always use a lead rope, her laughter rang out over the internet. Gail has been blind for about 20 years and riding for at least 15 of them, many of them with Laurie shouting out "Duck! There's a branch!".

I have to admit that I couldn't wait to meet this woman who as far as I could see was some sort of marvel. I ride in the desert all the time and sometimes even being able to see where I'm going, I'm terrified. My horses are lovely and kind and fit and fast. The thought of tearing around the desert without being able to see where I was going was a bit more than I could comprehend. And then there's the interesting fact that I have 17 dogs wandering around the farm as well. What if she fell over one? These were some of the thoughts racing around my brain while I went to the airport to pick Laurie and Gail up.

Within a couple of days I was having to remind myself that Gail couldn't see the things that Laurie and I could. The first time we went out riding I put Gail on Nazeer, my favourite Mr. Responsible. To my vast relief they were utterly fine. Laurie rode next to her and cued her to move right or left as needed, but the job was rather different from riding down the trails of Massachusetts. Our desert is EMPTY! But at the same time there are hazards such as changes in sand consistency, hills, and archaeological excavations.

I think that it would be an understatement to say that I was impressed with Gail's willingness to risk life and limb on a horse. That has always been my forte, but not with my eyes closed. Definitely. At one point, Mr. Responsible decided to show Gail a shortcut during a gallop up a wadi, which even she acknowledged was a bit more than she had bargained for. He made a big loop to the right and as she heard our hoofbeats moving off into the distance she got rather concerned. But Mr. R came to his senses and stopped so that we could gather our lost duckling.

I don't know what the impact of Gail's trip to Egypt was on her, but for me it was, to use a bad pun, eye-opening. She gave me a chance to see some of the boundaries of our ability to come back from adversity and to adapt to less than friendly conditions. After watching her having a great time on horses and camels, negotiating through a crowded, crazy horse fair and appreciating fine stone work in the Coptic museum, I have a sense that there are fewer limits on my life than I'd previously thought. Thank you, Gail.

copyright 2010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Walk Dammit!

Sometimes I help people learn to ride. I wouldn't say I'm a riding instructor, but sometimes I help people learn to ride. When they want to really learn to "ride" as in dressage, jumping or just the proper way to sit a horse, I usually send them to friends of mine who are riding instructors...and most of the people who I help to learn to ride do end up with proper instruction at some point.

So what do I do? I really like to start people in their quest to learn to relate to horses. I particularly like to help women in their early days with horses. Women have a special love affair with horses. Horses are beautiful, strong, soft, gentle, powerful, fast, free creatures...horses are all that we all want to be and often feel we aren't. But horses can teach us so much as well, much more than we realise at first. On weekend mornings I host the local American school riding clubs for the middle and high school, most of whose members are teenaged girls. Some of them have established their relationship with horses and some of them are just trying it out. I teach them about the kind of animals we are, horses and humans, and how it is little short of miraculous that our horses learn to trust us predators so completely. I teach them about the natural hierarchies in a herd of horses, how the older mares who have the nerve to push up to the hay pile and tell everyone else to move over get the respect. I point out to them that the horses are not saying "please" or making quiet requests but they are asserting what they feel are their natural rights. Most teenaged girls are a bit fuzzy about what their natural rights are, so I think that it's good for them to learn to boss someone around.

When I got my first horse, Dorika who is currently my partner of over 20 years, I was in heaven and hell simultaneously. I wanted desperately for her to be my friend and ally...and she bit me. A wiser horseman told me that before she could be my friend, she was going to have to respect me. In order to earn her respect, I had to be able to order her around, tell her what to do, have her obey me. In short, I had to stop saying "Please" and just say "Do it". I tried it and we found a new way to work together.

Most of the girls who come to ride here are really polite young women. I put them on horses who will stand around looking at the flowers until they are told in a believable way that the rider wants them to move. Don't get me wrong...these horses know how to move just fine. Tell them to go for a two mile canter in the desert and you will get one you'll never forget, but if an unsure student is sitting on their backs, they will await their orders. We start out with "Please walk" and work our way up the ladder of intensity and force. After a while, I tell them that I promise not to tell their mothers but they need to be able to at least think "Walk, dammit!" in order to get their point across. Giggling nervously, they mutter "Walk, dammit!" and lo and behold, the ponies amble off around the arena and young women grin.

As I point out, if you can boss around a horse, the sky's the limit.

copyright 20010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Evolution

In the fall of 2001 I was invited on a trail ride in Mexico by a friend. I'd never been on an organised riding vacation and in the wake of all the chaos of my husband's death my children pressed me to accept the chance to take this holiday. It was not a commercial trip, but a group of friends and acquaintances who were traveling to Morelia in central Mexico to ride most of the way between Morelia and Uruapan, through the volcanic mountains and green countryside. It was a lovely trip and opened my eyes to equestrian tourism.

I'd been riding in Egypt for over ten years at that time and had seen the kind of riding that was available to tourists here. Most people would get cornered by one of the horse touts at the pyramids of Giza and if they were lucky would sort of toddle around in a circle....or if they were unlucky they would be chased raggedly over the desert hanging desperately onto a 50 year old saddle on a 3 year old horse. It wasn't a pretty picture at all. I had been riding in the countryside near the pyramids of Abu Sir for some time and thought that it would be interesting for other people to ride there too.

When I returned from Mexico I began thinking about what I would need to be able to take people out on my horses. The first thing was training, quite obviously to me. The thought of someone having an accident on one of my ponies horrified me, so I began testing them out with a variety of situations. They were already fine with diesel pumps, sheep flocks, hanging laundry and cars, but I gradually expanded the range of experience. I also had two four and five year old geldings to bring along into the group, so we worked each of them with one of the older horses to allow them to learn by observation the proper trail etiquette. With at first four horses and then gradually a few more, I developed a string of horses who I felt confident in offering to paying clients. I was blessed with my first clients who were the wife and daughter of the then Belgian ambassador to Egypt. Nathalie and Pauline had a wonderful sense of adventure and over the years became friends much more than riding clients. A good friend of mine who has a local travel agency advised me not to advertise too much as I would end up too busy too fast and not be able to deal with it. Good advice, but I did build my website.

Over the next few years things changed gradually for me. I realised that with the children gone to study and work in the US the huge house in Maadi was simply too big for me. I rented it out and moved to the area near the pyramids of Abu Sir where I was keeping my horses on some rented land. I also began a serious hunt for some land that I could buy so that the horses and I would be in one place. I found 2.5 feddan (roughly 2.5 acres) only a few metres from my rented house and over 18 months built a small house for me and paddocks for my horses, who now numbered roughly twelve. We were working fairly steadily, but fortunately I wasn't having to depend on my income from the riding to support the horses and myself. I was thrilled when our income almost covered our expenses, but that wasn't all that often. Growing pains can really be painful.

Fast forward about six years and things have seriously changed. I now have over twenty horses at the farm, many of them gifts from people who had a special horse that they couldn't bear to sell when they had to leave Egypt. They've moved into the herd gradually and joined the group. I've had a few babies born and have two three-year olds and three two-year olds. Word of mouth has been good to me. Many of my local clients are from the various embassies and international businesses in Cairo, many of them are women who appreciate being able to ride in a place where no one is hitting on them, where they can totally relax and enjoy the experience. I do beginner rides for the Community Services Association to introduce novices to trail riding, work with some local schools' riding clubs and take visitors to Egypt who find me through guide books or my website out riding.

Then last fall I was contacted by Wendy Hofstee of Unicorn Trails who wanted to come to the farm to ride and talk about equestrian tourism. After years of not being able to work in Egypt, they were looking for someone to work with and my work seemed to please them. So last week I had my first group of clients. From one end of the system, a client, to the other, an operator, in a few years. And it is a major change.

As a client my experience was all about laughs, comradeship and fun on the trail. I was riding a sweet little ranch mare for the 8 days of riding and the pace was leisurely to say the least. I don't think we broke into a trot more than a couple of times, but then the tour leader was a gentleman of 92 years of age who rode every day but one. Slow was fine because there was so much to see and enjoy. As an operator, the experience is somewhat more stressful. I'm watching my horses prior to a trip to be sure that they are sound. We check saddles and pads to be sure that the tack is going to be comfortable for the horses and riders...but the horses are more important from my point of view. We adjust the feed to accommodate the increase in work. I try to combine horses and riders to make happy combinations for the week. While we are riding, I'm watching the horses and riders to make sure that everyone is doing all right. Considering that a tour involves over 20 hours of riding and about 150 km of trail in 6 days, that is rather a lot of work. At the end of the week, I'm in bed at about 8 pm for a twelve hour stretch. But would I miss it? Not for anything.


copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Sugar Foot

It was shoeing day today...well, not actually shoeing because most of my horses are barefoot. Our footing here is quite nice for horses being sand and dirt for the most part. My farriers are two young men who learned their trade from my old farrier, who while he isn't so aged himself has had to retire due to brain cancer. A number of Omar's clients banded together a few years ago to arrange to have him trained by visiting farriers, so Shaban and Abdel Halim have a real advantage.

Currently I have a friend from Canada staying with me who has been working with vets and farriers for years, so Paddi offered to help out with the boys to work on their barefoot trimming. In the process, we found that one of my three year olds, a sweet chestnut mare, had an abscess in her left hind foot. Paddi directed Abdel Halim to cut down to the edge of the abscess and then had us prepare a thick mixture of white sugar and betadine to draw out the infection. This gooey concoction was slathered on the bottom of the foot over the abscess, which was already starting to drain, and then a thick cotton pad was placed over the entire sticky mess.

Prior to putting on the betadine/sugar mix, Paddi had made up a patch made up of strips of the horseman's best friend, duct tape, which she had stuck to her jeans. This was then pulled off the jeans and slapped onto the cotton to hold it in place and to protect it while the mare walked around.

The duct tape should protect the cotton padding on the bottom of the foot and the cotton padding puts pressure on the abscess encouraging it to drain. The betadine and sugar mixture is an antimicrobial addition. Sugar isn't usually thought of in terms of fighting germs, but the entired concept of jams and preserves is based on the fact that sugar draws all of the moisture out of any invading organisms keeping the fruit fresh. If you ever look at a very old jar of jam in the fridge, the only place you will see mold is at the very edges of the mix where the sugar is most dilute.

After the patch was installed over the cotton padding, duct tape was wound around the hoof to keep it in place and to provide another layer of protection. Once the foot was deemed to be sufficiently bandaged, the mare carefully placed it on the ground and walked rather gingerly in her new silver footwear to the paddock. Tomorrow we will change the bandages and inspect the abscess to see how the drainage is progressing. Amazing, the uses of sugar these days!

copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Equestrian Consciousness Raising

I'm working through a mass of information, inspiration, and thought. I was lucky enough to have a friend of a friend come to stay at my farm to give some clinics in balanced riding, saddle fitting and ground work. To say the least, this encounter has provided food for thought on a number of fronts. I'd like to clarify something first: I've had horses for about twenty years now, all of them in Egypt. I took proper riding lessons from about the age of eight to twelve and all the riding that I've done since then has been without proper supervision other than 18 months of informal dressage lessons that I took with a friend about 13 years ago. I've been out of touch with virtually all the equestrian trends in North America for as long as I've owned horses. At the same time, my academic background in social psychology and interest in animal behaviour has been very useful in helping my horses to teach me about them. Perhaps other people might not have found so much revelation in this learning experience, but then other people aren't writing this blog.

One of the basic points that really knocked me over was the fact that horses were never made for people to ride them. That may seem truly elementary, but to a genetically horse-mad person like myself it was like a bolt of lightning. Our clinician, Zsuzsu Illes, was explaining the theory behind saddle construction to a group of us with a drawing on one of my horses. The back of the horse is like a suspension bridge, to quote Zsuzsu, created to carry the belly of the horse underneath the spine. The musculature of the back is there to provide locomotion to the horse, not to carry the sometimes considerable weight of a rider. The saddle is intended to spread the rider's weight across the back so as not to harm the horse.

Every so often one runs across an idea that knocks the years of experience for a loop. The thought that horses were not created to be ridden was one of those. Oh, I know that horses were domesticated over centuries and that riding as a discipline has developed over the centuries, but somewhere inside my soul was a horse-mad little girl who "just knew" that horses existed to be ridden. In fact, when examined seriously and without the madness, the concept that riding a horse is a somewhat unnatural act has a lot of evidence and induces wonder at the kindness of these large creatures who willingly place themselves at our beck and call. But I recall watching my last crop of youngsters starting out to carry riders. They'd been introduced to everything but a steady pressure on their backs and they were very calm for experiencing their first time under saddle. However, their steps were tentative and it was clear that one of the issues was one of balance, not so much their own alone, but that of the rider on their backs.

Recalling the horses' concerns for their ability to balance with a rider on their backs, and the design of saddles that rest on the muscles for the locomotion for the horse, the realisation of the importance of saddle fit hit me like a truck. Up to that point, the question of saddle fit had been something that I would skirt gingerly like an angry snake. In a country where virtually every saddle has been imported by someone who never had a chance to try it on a horse, what were the odds that all of my saddles would be shown to cripple my horses? Very scary thought. But Zsuzsu put my fears to rest to the extent that she could.

I have about 19 riding horses (and some youngsters still not under saddle) and about 10 saddles. Ideally, each horse and rider would have a saddle that is perfect for the combination of the two. But I have many people riding my horses so the best that I can do is try to have each horse have at least one saddle that fits him/her relatively well. After spending a couple of days trying saddles on horses, I can say that I have one saddle that doesn't fit anyone at all, and a number of horses who can use a variety of saddles with varying degrees of success. The trick to this lies in the gazillion pads that we already had on hand and the three new ones that I bought from Zsuzsu. Almost none of my saddles are perfect, but with the right combinations of pads, we reach a decent level of comfort. Considering that three of the saddles were expensive American custom fit endurance saddles (the saddlemaker fit the horses herself on a visit here years ago), one might hope for at least three horses with a perfect fit, but horses, just like us, change shape over time and now these saddles don't fit perfectly.

As we moved on to the riding clinics I found more saddle fit revelations. I was aware of pinching, rubbing, and so on as issues in saddle fit but I hadn't thought about the way that a saddle could balance or unbalance a rider. As the clinic photographer I had plenty of time to notice and think about the issues that Zsuzsu brought up. Like myself, the riders who came were people who had either bought new saddles in the hopes that they would fit existing horses or they were people who had found used saddles that more or less fit their horses. The fit could be fiddled with the right kinds of pads, but in many cases the effect on the rider of a saddle that wasn't really the right one for the horse or the rider was unfortunate. A jumping style saddle could affect the balance pulling the rider's knee forward until the heels were no longer under the hips, creating an imbalance. If the seat of the saddle was too small, or tipped the rider either forward or back, the same thing could happen.

I ride horses a lot. It's how I make my (and my horses') living. But I have never really thought as much about how I ride as I did during those two weeks with Zsuzsu. It was rather like surviving a mental tsunami. When she and I went out for a ride for fun, I started laughing about half an hour into the ride and told her she'd ruined riding for me because now I was thinking about all the things that I was doing wrong. I was only partly kidding. Nothing could ruin riding for me. It's my sanity, my joy, and I'm most alive when I'm in the saddle...to say nothing of the fact that only there do my arthritic knees not bother me. And it wasn't a bad thing to bring myself back to the consciousness that my horses were not created to carry me, although they do so very willingly, and that it is therefore my responsibility to make their work as pleasant and painless as possible.

copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The World Is Smaller Now

A couple of months ago I was contacted by the Longriders Guild, an organisation of people who do long distance horse treks, exploring our world in an old fashioned way in this age of cars and planes. To become a Longrider, one has to complete an authenticated trip of over one thousand miles on horseback, no mean accomplishment. I'd love to be one, but I don't really see it in the cards at this point. I've followed the Guild on their website for a number of years and have corresponded with riders who have traveled through Egypt. Basha and CuChullaine O'Reilly have built a phenomenal data base of riders who have accomplished these long rides through history and the present, created a publishing company for books about equestrian travel, manage a marvelous source of information for prospective travelers, and along the way get to do some traveling themselves...planning a round the world trip on horseback in the near future.

The Guild's reason for contacting me recently, since I'm not a Longrider, was to get my take on an event that they had been consulted about by a company that specialises in adventure tourism. The Adventurists, a British tourism company, has previously specialised in signing up people who were willing to buy a trashed out car in one part of Africa to make their way in a quasi-rally to another part. Since the company makes a serious show of NOT supplying support for the people who sign up...after all, the danger is all part of the fun, don't you know?...this is a "vacation" for the seriously addicted to adrenaline. But this winter, The Adventurists decided to branch out a bit and to offer a new holiday...a thousand mile horserace in Mongolia! They were looking to the Longriders Guild for help and support. My initial response was that these people were utterly out of their minds. How were people going to care for the horses? Did they realise how small Mongolian ponies are? A car enthusiast can fix a radiator if it breaks, but no one can fix a lame or sick horse. I really couldn't believe that they were serious.

Needless to say this support was not forthcoming. The situation that has been set up is that about 25 participants have paid roughly $5 thou each for the privilege of being landed in Mongolia where a charity who will receive a hefty donation has apparently rounded up 800 Mongolian ponies for the use of the participants in a thousand mile race across the Mongolian steppes. When the Guild first told me that the Adventurists were planning this, my return email suggested was that it was totally insane and being an optimist, I couldn't see how this would ever get off the ground. The course is utterly littered with landmines..figuratively speaking.

I live in Egypt and take horses trekking in some relatively inhospitable areas, from a horse's point of view, so some of the problems that I could see with the plan were those of language (how are these travelers going to communicate with anyone that they might meet or need assistance from? Each one is traveling alone and in competition with the others.), terrain (the area is without roads, signposts or even many settlements and Mongolia isn't precisely known for its balmy climate), experience (experienced horsemen look at an "opportunity" like this and laugh while walking away...most of these people are novices). And finally, my experience seeing what can happen in long distance races for a cash purse made me pray that the project would never get off the ground. Back in 2000 to 2002 when the UAE was making a huge push to introduce the sport of endurance racing to many of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa, there were many races for sizeable purses in countries where the locals had no idea of what was involved in traveling on a horse for a distance of over about 10 miles....and many, many, many dead horses during and after the races.

Emails have been flying back and forth for a number of months while we all waited for The Adventurists to suddenly regain sanity regarding this race, but this has not happened. Apparently the race is on, the participants have ponied up their entrance fee (to use an unforgivable pun) and possibly the biggest equestrian disaster to hit the news in recent time is in the offing. No efforts have been made for this to be sanctioned under international rules with the appropriate supervision by stewards and vets. In a serious endurance race, it is required that horses pass a veterinary check at the beginning, the end, and at stages throughout the race, generally not more that 25 miles apart. The horses' condition is of the utmost concern and if the horse is not fit to continue the rider and horse are disqualified. There are NO veterinarians involved in this project at all. A group of relatively inexperienced riders are on their own.

I would suggest that you go to the website linked to the title of this post to see the research that the Guild has conducted in their efforts to convince The Adventurists that while dropping off clueless auto enthusiasts in uncomfortable places might endanger the humans involved, they have no right to endanger the horses of Mongolia in this way. There are a number of petitions that can be signed, letters that can be sent. We are all hoping that someone with a degree of sense will block this madness. The world is a smaller place now and we are all responsible for it.

Read http://www.thelongridersguild.com/mongolia.htm




copyright 2009 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Don't Ride to Giza

I have people contact me through my website all the time saying that they are coming to Egypt and have always dreamed of riding a horse "at the pyramids". I always write back asking "which pyramids?" although I know that they are referring to the big ones, the pyramids at Giza, The Pyramids. I point out that the last count I saw was that Egypt had about 120 pyramids and that there are much nicer pyramids for riding than those at Giza. I'm sure that Dr. Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, would agree with me since he's certainly made it more difficult to ride a horse to Giza.

I live about ten miles south of the Giza plateau, roughly halfway down a line of most of the pyramids in Egypt. I can see the pyramids of Abu Sir from my garden, and a nice view of Giza across green fields (an amazing sight and one that is getting harder and harder to see daily) is available about 10 minutes away on horseback, weather permitting. The Step pyramid at Sakkara can be seen from a nearby vantage point from the fields, and even better there is a hill behind Abu Sir from which on a clear day you can see Giza, Abu Sir, Sakkara, and Dahshur...roughly 80% of the pyramids in Egypt. Of course we have to hope for decent weather and low pollution from the city, which is getting more infrequent also on a daily basis, but that's a different story. So my question is legitimate and my advice is usually that Giza is best seen by car and then riding be done in more horse-friendly areas.

I recently had a visitor from Costa Rica and he and I decided to ride to Giza from the farm to see what effects the Antiquities Council's new security measures had on being able to ride to the pyramids there. The ride up there isn't bad really, as long as you stay far enough away from the army base at Beni Yusef. They were having maneuvers or competitions or something that day and we rode north to the accompaniment of artillery fire, making a safe distance even farther as far as I was concerned. I had no idea what they were shooting....live shells or what?...and had no wish to find out. The horses were infinitely less concerned with the racket than we were, which was a relief. When we came within sight of the "closed" portion of the Ring Road, a section that was supposed to circle around behind the Giza plateau but that was never finished due to opposition from UNESCO and the Antiquities Council, we received our first unpleasant surprise. Although the road is just a dirt road, the traffic on it is heavy. Trucks, cars, dump trucks, you name it...they are all traveling on the road as if it were a standard highway. Many of the cars are those of the police so acceptance of this non-road seems to be fairly universal. The reason for the traffic lies in the incredible jam at the roundabout where the Alexandria/Cairo desert highway, the Fayoum highway, and Pyramids Road/Faisal Street all meet near the site of the new Egyptian museum. On a normal day a car can sit there for almost an hour, so it's no wonder that motorists have sought alternatives. To be fair, the government is building an extension to the Ring Road that will connect these areas without using the pyramids area, but it isn't completed yet and who knows if the traffic will lessen when it is done.

So after picking our way cautiously across the traffic, we entered the desert that leads to the plateau. This desert was at one time home to some weekend cottages for the well-connected but they have been bulldozed many years before. Unfortunately the clean-up never quite finished and there are areas where concrete floors still cover the desert sand and piles of rubble remain. As we made our way down the sandy washes towards the wall that now surrounds the Giza antiquities area we first began to be a bit uneasy. Dark spots on the sand in the distance attracted the horses' attention initially and then ours. Closer inspection revealed them to be the remains of horses lying in the sand.

I don't take inexperienced riders to Giza. It isn't such a tough ride as such, but the way that the clients of the Nazlit Semman stables careen across the sands pursued by whip-wielding grooms with little or no control of the horses makes me worry about the safety of my horses and clients. I warn people to assume that any horse heading for them has every intention of running them down...defensive riding is definitely the order of the day.

On this particular day, the riders were, for the most part, fairly calm, but the dead horses that we had to pass on our way in were evidence of the fact that plenty of others hadn't been. Horse carcasses lined the wash as we walked down towards the entrance to the stables area of Nazlit Semman. Most of them looked to be a week or so old at least, horses who had dropped in their tracks as they were on their way back to the stables and the bodies had been left for the kites, crows and desert dogs to dispose of. The Equine Influenza outbreak had been particularly fierce in this area this summer, hardly surprising since the horses live in crowded conditions and are usually in poor condition, and I suspect that many of the bodies we were seeing were horses who had never had the chance to recover before having to work. I know that my horses who were in good health before the outbreak took a long time to be feeling energetic and happy again. We let them rest for at least a month before any were ridden and then they were worked very gently for the next month...short hours, short distances, and slow speeds.

Once in the stables area we discovered that the new security measures meant that we all had to buy tickets to the pyramids (before a little baksheesh had given entrance), and my groom, who was accompanying us on a training ride for one of the younger horses, was only allowed in once the police decided that he did not work in the immediate area. Only local personnel from a particular list are allowed in now. Once inside we rode up to the three large pyramids (and a number of smaller ones) enjoying the fact that the area was relatively uncrowded, but still not horse carcass free. However, the areas in which we could ride appeared to be rather restricted unlike before. It was not entirely clear what the rules were, since we got different versions from the various police guards and other horse people.

On our way back out we decided to cut the body wadi out of the route and head home through the countryside which took us past an area that seems to be used as a dump by the stables and local inhabitants. There we made our way past a man hauling a painfully thin dead white horse out to the desert on a wooden wagon and then past an area where a fairly recently dead chestnut horse marked a pile of at least six other bodies and a set of feet that protruded from a blackened pile of debris indicating that someone had used old tires to try to burn a horse's body nearby. It wasn't much of an improvement. Our spirits didn't really rise again until we'd made our way down to the familiar dirt roads of the countryside, having negotiated with a fair bit of difficulty the rush hour traffic on the road that isn't there.

For myself, I will be happy never to ride to Giza again, and my warnings to fellow riders about what kind of things will be seen are clear and blunt. It's much better to go there by car and avoid all of that. It would be even better to see someone help the poor horses who work in horrible conditions, but how that will happen is beyond me, unless the stables simply close due to lack of customers. To be fair, there are some very nicely kept horses there, but I have to wonder at their mental state. My horses find the experience of being in the presence of so much pain and fear quite unsettling. They can deal with chaos, cars, noise and traffic with complete calm, but the fear and pain unhinge them a bit and their relief at leaving the area is so clear.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani