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The 2004 Wisdom and Haflinger Humor of Jenny Rausch of Brush Prairie, Washington
January 2004: Deer Chaser:
I admit to a morbid curiosity here- does anyone else ever chase
deer with their Haflingers? DD, our 9-year-old mare and my favorite
partner-in-crime, used to be terrified of deer for some strange reason, so
finally one day when I was putting her out to pasture, I noticed three of the
local "lush" herd wandering idly through the neighbor's goat's hay, and I hopped
on her to chase them. I figured they would run away as fast as they could, which
might build her confidence, but instead, we had to push them like recalcitrant
cattle. They just weren't very concerned about that horse chasing them. My horse
is a frustrated tyrant, turns out, so we spent about 20 minutes pushing three
deer around and around the circular driveway. As soon as DD realized that deer
move when you get real close, she put aside her fear and instead took up an
officious, busy-body attitude, so that now whenever we approach deer, which is
frequent here, she wants to us run up at them and push them around, yelling rude
epithets and sticking out her tongue. DD gets pretty nasty, too. This has turned
out to be a useful tool, though, as I recently declared open
war on the deer population, after the third replanting of a well-fenced section
of my garden. All I wanted was a few beans and a carrot or two, and they just
had to eat them. Repeatedly. Then, they took up sleeping under a fig tree in
this same garden. This fig tree and garden is less than 15 feet from my front
door, in my tiny little front yard. That was the last straw, and then I broke my
favorite coffee cup on one, who just looked at me and flicked its disgustingly
supercilious tail in my direction while chewing the last blooms from one of my
french roses. They have the whole world here on this side of the river, but they
have to come eat my sweet peas. I don't feel guilty at all that DD's
deer-bullying has caught on to the point where all of the other Haflingers now
chase deer, too, when the deer are stupid enough to look for a place to sleep in
the horse pasture. Of course, my Haflingers now chase dogs, cats, unsuspecting
small children, and the chickens our nice neighbors are trying to raise for
eggs, but you have to break a few chickens to make an omelet... I have
discovered that it is pretty funny watching two deer and a rooster trying to get
away when the two three-year-old Haflingers cornered them about a week ago
against the safety fence with the tall hot wire over in the upper
corner of our acreage, making it hard to escape. I stood there and laughed until
my teeth hurt and my husband begged me to stop. Of course, my neighbors now
think that the whole Rausch family is sadistic ( Frank decided that it was
pretty darn funny, too!) but I can live with that. Actually, I am sadistic only
when it comes to deer, and they did it first, as my youngest sister used to
exclaim with pathetic regularity and outright bald-faced lack of factual,
truthful content. I still can't believe my mother used to fall for that.
July 2004: Master of Trails
Well, what with the kind weather here in the last month, my
husband and I decided that we were way overdue for a horseback getaway. The
destination that fit the bill most easily was the fire access road that runs for
about 4 miles through the center of our friendly neighboring housing
developments, Exclusive Heights and Shyster Lane. Mind, we live in the country,
surrounded by deer (heck, I didn't like those roses anyway), bears (really),
cougars (unfortunately) and small boys bearing pellet guns (they are jealous of
my real gun, carried due to the overabundance of the aforementioned surrounding
threats, of which small boys bearing pellet guns actually ranks quite high).
This is a strange place to find 193 exceedingly fancy homes, as far as I am
concerned, some of which are owned by folks that look at people who touch animal
hair as a lower life form or just very brain damaged. Being kind to those less
fortunate to themselves is a mark of many overly-well-to-do persons, though, so
I took full advantage of it and got permission to ride wherever I like across
their little lots, lanes, and that fire access area I mentioned.
I have been putting off getting trail miles on our 4-1/2 year-old gelding,
Booger, as I thought I had a pretty good excuse or two, such as A: I have been
feeling older and tireder what with new additions to family and work, and B: I
didn't want to yet. None the less, it is way past time to introduce him to the
joys of steep paved road surfaces, UPS trucks (no Boog, you can't chase them),
garbage cans (no Boog, you can't eat them), small dogs (no, Boog, you can't
chase them) and little boys with pellet guns festooning every treelimb big
enough to hang from (no Boog, you can't chase them or eat them). Following my
husband's QH, the faithful Uncle Tiny, on whom my unfeeling husband comfortably
sat, trying to look as if he were not laughing at my running conversations with
Booger and God, we proceeded up hill and over dale (and one small boy on a
bicycle; no Boog, you can't chase him), until we reached the safety of the bear,
deer, and cougar infested fire access road. Picture what used to be a fine,
well-graveled lane, large enough for a fire truck to drive on, but unfortunately
curving far too hard into and out of the gullies to actually be able to TURN on
the fire access road; therefore, having filled the paper requirements for a fire
access road to the hard to access upper Shyster Lane development, it is actually
a deserted, desolate stretch of curving and overgrown gravel path at this point.
On either side of the road, there stretches several miles of dark, thick, brushy
woods with little creeks and rabbit trails wandering through them, or as our
intrepid health-crazy rich neighbors call them, jogging
trails. On a good day, one can see forever into the Columbia Gorge, provided you
have x-ray vision and don't object to being chewed on by carnivorous animals
while sight-seeing. This is a wonderful place to develop nerve, patience,
forwardness, heart, surefootedness, and character. It is a good place to train a
young horse, too. Depending on how crazy or perverted one is, you can ride off
onto trails that are pretty challenging. On a wet day, you had better carry an
anchor when coming back down one of them, or give your horse skiing lessons,
whichever you prefer. You see, you can't jump off, as in most places, there is a
gorge on one side, and a steep hill on the other. I have had a 5 mile per hour
walk turn into 16 mile per hour sledding on a damp day in one particular area on
the backside of a certain canyon, on the way up Mt. Horrible. I found that if
you flap hard enough, you can slow landings to a reasonably safe speed,
particularly if your Haflinger gets the idea and flaps along with you. My
husband has not ridden this green-belt area with me before, preferring the
danger, fun, and challenge of the trails put through the NFS land anywhere from
the state of Washington to Wyoming. Me, I am not a trail snob, being content to
ride anywhere, as long as I am on the back of a horse. I was patient with both
his and Uncle Tiny's disparaging remarks about the pre-school nature of the
footing along the access road, and how boring the jogger's trail along the creek
bottom that leads to the gorge was, and of course, we all had a good laugh at
Boog and my expense as he piddled around pretending he didn't see
that little log we tripped over, while watching what sure looked like a small
black bear-shaped shadow scurrying up a tree ahead of us. (*Note: I don't mind
large bear-shaped shadows running away from us, but the cub-shaped ones scare
me, at least when riding a green Haflinger that is inclined to want to nose
anything new, whether new things are riding bicylcles or climbing trees in a
panic, or defending small bear-shaped shadows in trees.) Har, har, har. Pretty
funny. Being a very good sport, as well as one who has ridden a fair share of
greenhorn Haflingers up and down the hills in this area, I sportingly suggested
that we take that little trail just ahead, the one that runs up that little
hilly thingy, if my husband and his elitist horse can stand the boredom for a
little while longer? Being the gentleman that he is, my dear husband even
volunteered to go first, in case (snort, laugh) that little (choke, laugh) bear
phantom (giggle) gets ahead of us. I really, really hate it when my husband's
horse snickers like that. Bad enough that my husband does it. After the first 30
yards or so up the main trail, my husband shouted back "This is more like it! Is
the whole thing this steep?" I hollered back that no, this was the boring part.
Just about then, he and ol' Tiny hit the part of the trail that has a crumbling
clay cliff under it, with rock and clay clinging hardily to the upper side. Tiny
finally quit laughing as he saw what lay in front of us, evidently deciding that
those legs clamped into his sides, and clawlike fingers sunk into his neck fur
might mean he needed to get serious. Booger, being surefooted as a mule, per my
usual experience with Haflingers, plodded along, trying to see over the edge
(close enough, Boog, we don't want to get back down that way, pal) and making
snide remarks about slow riders on the trail. (Booger, unlike myself, could be a
trail snob quite easily, but I am pretty used to fixing this fault in horses, as
trail snobbery and I don't get along real well). Actually, he repeatedly shoved
his nose half under dear old Uncle Tiny's tail and literally pushed him faster
ahead of us, which for some reason elicited squeals of happiness from my
husband, who seemed to be really enjoying the trail ahead of us, well enough to
begin to study it very closely, probably in an attempt to be able to describe
it's ease to his buddies when we got home. In an attempt to help ease the
boredom, I suggested that we trot, as I was also getting bored with this wimpy
trail. Frank did not want to trot, as he had just found that there was a nearly
extinct form of buttercup, the rare yellow Bloomus Vulgaricus, growing above him
from the side of the cliff, so Boog and I asked politely if we could pass him on
the drop-off side. From the silence ahead, we assumed that there was no
objection, so we trotted up alongside and around my husband and his mount, to
let them sniff the flowers a little longer. I hate being a spoilsport, and I
felt pretty guilty at boring people with such mundanity along my little local
riding trails. I hollered back at them not to let me hold them back, go ahead
and admire the flowers
some more, but that I thought that Boog and I should go look at the steep spot.
Frank yelled sure, go ahead, and then I heard what sounded like, "Wait a minute,
what steep spot?", but at that point I was far enough up the hill not to want to
turn around to chat about it, as we were excited to get ahead of ol' tried and
true and his horse for a bit. After cantering and trotting up through the one
bad part, which is almost straight up for about 100 feet, in sort of a trough
where the rain water gullied the dirt pretty well and left some shingle and
loose rock but not much else, we saw the dynamic duo coming around the bend
below. I guess our coming back down the trail toward them concerned Frank for a
minute, because I am fairly sure he said a naughty word when he saw what was
ahead of him. I apologized,
and promised that we would keep it to a trot next time we came down, to kind of
spare the trail and such like. We had to wait for a little while for Frank
and Tiny to finish their hissed argument about the best way to show trail yutz
like Booger and I how to do this part properly, but then Frank won, and got
going up the trail ahead of us again. I was really proud of my boy, as this was
the first time he had ever had to wait for another horse and rider to compare
opinions about riding technique like that- He was so patient, and I know he was
getting a little bored himself. About halfway up, Frank had to request that we
trot back down and wait for him there, because Boog mistook their ecological
concern about causing futher erosion on that part of the trail as just plain
extremely slow and started shoving Tiny in the petootie again, to help him up
the harder parts. We both felt real bad about causing erosion to worsen like
that after it was pointed out to us, though, and so only walked up the remainder
of this section, after Frank and Tiny got to the top to help us negotiate the
hard parts. Boog did pretty well, but I can tell I am going to have to teach him
better trail manners if we are going to ride with other people often. One does
not make friends by showing callous unconcern about rare flowers and trail
erosion, let alone mistaking extreme slowness for extreme slowness, instead of
an ecologically responsible attitude. We'll have to work on that, but that is
why you trail ride, right? It gives you good goals. After we got out on the
upper part of the trail, we had deer popping back and forth in front of us,
which worried me a bit. I half expected Boog to spook, but instead, I had to
hold him back; I had forgotten that one of Boog's favorite things is deer racing
in his pasture, as often deer jump over to the horses' water trough after
decimating my roses. I don't know how much the deer enjoy it, but Booger appears
to really have fun, though he rarely beats them to the finish line. Frank and
Tiny were more patient with us greenhorns through the rest of the ride, only
occasionally shooting disgusted looks our way and muttering darkly, though I
couldn't quite make out what they were saying. Boog maintains he heard something
that sounded like "duhmhaz schohoffs", but that doesn't make a lot of sense to
me, and you can't usually rely on a young Haflinger to get quotes real straight
anyway; that is one of the things that has to come with experience and exposure.
We enjoyed the rest of the ride a lot, even when we saw the shadow of a small
boy carrying a pellet gun moving amoung the trees along the trail. Frank didn't
appear to notice it, and I hadn't thought that he would appreciate my mentioning
it to him, after his disgust
regarding my concern about the bear cub, so I thought I was being nice not to
mention it to him. I really didn't know that the kid was going to climb that
tree and yell "stand and deliver" at us, 'cause usually he goes to a different
stand of trees when it's just me riding. I guess that is one thing that Frank
and old Uncle Tiny have not run across in their world travels, judging from the
way they reacted to this particular threat. For a pair so concerned with
managing the ecology responsibly, you would think they would have known better
than to tear up the road like that before they left the vicinity. I refrained
from pointing out that it is poor trail etiquette to leave trails such a
disgusting mess for others to cope with, though, mostly because I can't sit on a
galloping horse that is shoving the one in front hard with his nose, while
avoiding deer, 2005 Lexus', small dogs and mailboxes while trying to protect my
hearing from the unpleasant side effects of having the sound barrier broken.
All in all, we had a blast together, in spite of the lack of challenge in trail
difficulty and having to keep pace with a completely inexperienced, newly broke
Haflinger ridden by a tired, aging woman with a warped sense of humor. We are
going again tomorrow, but Frank says he wants to choose which rabbit trail we
ride on this time. I am not sure of the etiquette here- Do I tell him about the
one that I consider somewhat scary, which runs along for about two miles along
and into Puke Canyon, before you get to Yell Point? When you are as experienced
as my husband is, I am sure it would be pretty irritating to have someone trying
to tell you where to go, so I guess we'll just follow along and try not to hold
them back too much. It isn't bad, once you get past that part where the
widowmaker snags lean over the trail, about where the seep causes the mud to
over flow the rocks you have to step on, right by the cave with all the ferns
and moss overhanging where the several of the little boys in the area like to
play...
October 2004: Haflingers and Cows
Okay, Haflingers and cows. Yes, I have used our Haflingers for
working cattle. As far as reining, well, reining should be looked at as a form
of dressage; they must learn to use the hindquarters, stay very light, be
submitted and yet forward. Some have better builds for doing this, but this is
not a real big problem in our breed. Good feet, good minds, etc. The temperament
of our Haffies varies to some extent, but two of ours have demonstrated real
talent. The argument that a fancy cow trainer/reiner trainer from CA has with a
Haflinger in serious reining is that they can't be "competitive" with a large
reiner due to size. I argue that trainer's expectations limit a horse far more
than a horse's short legs will. We argue on this a lot. I always win, though,
when I point out that HE is the professional reiner that recently bought a
Haflinger stud colt to cross onto his fancy reining mares, very quietly, to
improve his stock. So, yes, I know that they are quite functional and in some
cases talented in cow work and reining. Training makes a big difference in
reining. You have to approach it carefully and slowly, not missing steps, or you
will have a Haflinger that is heavy, inflexible, bossy speed demon with no
suppleness that wants to just bully the heck out of the cows. This breed has a
tendency to be pretty "in your face" aggressive, not necessarily in a bad way,
which really comes into play in cow work. One of my mares can really stare a cow
down, which is funny but causes more work for me as cows occasionally feel so
threatened by her that they try to run more due to that mental pressure. I
HIGHLY recommend trying it, get a cow/reiner person to work with you so you know
where you are going. It is truly a blast, imagine riding a cat cornering a
mouse. Good reiners are essentially dressage horses with a real job. Haflingers
have already proven that they can make very reasonable to darn good dressage
horses; give them a job they like and you see them blossom. This is true of
carriage work, cattle work, trail work, jumping, therapy work, and sometimes
even dressage! We own the sheep dogs of the horse world- They function best with
a job. They are happy doing something important, once they understand what it is
they are supposed to be doing. The more you work with them/give them to do, the
more fun they are. (Yes, you do have to teach them a basic work ethic first,
which can be very, uh, educational to both of you, but you need to teach that
regardless of what you want to do with them!) I have ridden some really fine
working horses on some of our friends' cattle ranches, as well as growing up
around cattle horses, and there is a lot of "cow" in some of our haflingers- Go
for it! Even if Haflingers stunk at it, it is a lot of fun, and that is what
most of us own our horses for anyway.