pony-free day, sigh
Nov. 8th, 2006 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quietannSo no ponies today because of the rain. And I am really missing ponies.
I rode in San Diego, so rain was much less of an issue. However, the years that I was riding had above-average rainfall thanks to the El Nino weather pattern. And the rain tended to come in huge roiling storms.
I never got the impression that the horses were much fazed by the rain. They just turned their butts towards it and huddled together. (Because it was San Diego, they didn't have a shed.) We rode in the rain if it wasn't too bad, and the only difference was having a much harder time getting the horses clean -- but it was actually worse *after* the rain when everything was muddy and there was no rain to wash the mud off the horses.
San Diego has rivers, but most of the year they are small streams in wide banks filled with brush and trees. This is what allowed a homeless guy to set up a treehouse *right in the middle* of the San Diego River and live there for several years; he kept an eye on the weather forecast, and just slept somewhere else when he couldn't go "home." But when it rains, the water goes from one bank of the rivers to the other and then some. And of course because land is scarce, a lot of buildings get put in the riverbeds; in one area there's a *very good reason* that all of the condos have parking garages on the ground floor!
Of the four places I rode, two were built on the upper banks of small rivers/large streams. And the rains wreaked havoc with riding more than once. In the second place, the horses were cut off from society several times (though the Mexican guys who cared for them were on site and gave them food and water). One time when the waters went down, the large paddock where the school horses were kept had a ditch 4 or 5 feet deep running diagonally across it; luckily none of the horses were hurt by falling in, and only one actually escaped by getting into the ditch and walking right under the fence. And he didn't go far, because horses are herd animals; he was very upset by being outside the paddock away from his buddies, and hadn't figured out how to get back in. Another time the same thing happened to the riding rink -- one corner was just *gone* so we strung a rope of plastic flags along the side of the vanished part, and no one fell in (though a couple of people fell off when their horses got spooked by the flags.)
That place had two roads in from the street. The first had a railroad trestle bridge over the channel cut by the river, and the second was just across the flood plain lower down. There were many times that neither road was passable by car, and many times I waded through water up to my hips so I could go riding. One time I waded through water up to my hips to feed the horses, because my riding instructor's car was broken, and the stable guys were in Mexico. (Can anyone imagine *today's parents* allowing their teenage daughters to wade through (dirty, possibly e-coli contaminated) water up to their hips???) The trestle bridge got washed out at least once per season and often took several weeks to repair.
I rode in San Diego, so rain was much less of an issue. However, the years that I was riding had above-average rainfall thanks to the El Nino weather pattern. And the rain tended to come in huge roiling storms.
I never got the impression that the horses were much fazed by the rain. They just turned their butts towards it and huddled together. (Because it was San Diego, they didn't have a shed.) We rode in the rain if it wasn't too bad, and the only difference was having a much harder time getting the horses clean -- but it was actually worse *after* the rain when everything was muddy and there was no rain to wash the mud off the horses.
San Diego has rivers, but most of the year they are small streams in wide banks filled with brush and trees. This is what allowed a homeless guy to set up a treehouse *right in the middle* of the San Diego River and live there for several years; he kept an eye on the weather forecast, and just slept somewhere else when he couldn't go "home." But when it rains, the water goes from one bank of the rivers to the other and then some. And of course because land is scarce, a lot of buildings get put in the riverbeds; in one area there's a *very good reason* that all of the condos have parking garages on the ground floor!
Of the four places I rode, two were built on the upper banks of small rivers/large streams. And the rains wreaked havoc with riding more than once. In the second place, the horses were cut off from society several times (though the Mexican guys who cared for them were on site and gave them food and water). One time when the waters went down, the large paddock where the school horses were kept had a ditch 4 or 5 feet deep running diagonally across it; luckily none of the horses were hurt by falling in, and only one actually escaped by getting into the ditch and walking right under the fence. And he didn't go far, because horses are herd animals; he was very upset by being outside the paddock away from his buddies, and hadn't figured out how to get back in. Another time the same thing happened to the riding rink -- one corner was just *gone* so we strung a rope of plastic flags along the side of the vanished part, and no one fell in (though a couple of people fell off when their horses got spooked by the flags.)
That place had two roads in from the street. The first had a railroad trestle bridge over the channel cut by the river, and the second was just across the flood plain lower down. There were many times that neither road was passable by car, and many times I waded through water up to my hips so I could go riding. One time I waded through water up to my hips to feed the horses, because my riding instructor's car was broken, and the stable guys were in Mexico. (Can anyone imagine *today's parents* allowing their teenage daughters to wade through (dirty, possibly e-coli contaminated) water up to their hips???) The trestle bridge got washed out at least once per season and often took several weeks to repair.
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-08 11:35 pm (UTC)Can anyone imagine a horse-loving teen actually seeking a parent's permission before just doing it? :)
no subject
Date: 2006-11-09 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-10 09:55 pm (UTC)our ring is too muddy to be safe in the rain. may be better once the fence and new footing are down, though wednesday's rain was purely a lose :/
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Date: 2006-11-10 10:40 pm (UTC)One advantage that we had in San Diego is that the soil was so sandy that everything drained very quickly. But there were spots on the trails that we had to avoid because the adobe clay could easily bow a horse's tendon when wet.