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

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