Slightly better ride

I see horses everywhere. I was just spacing out staring at a glass of water, and I clearly saw Baasha's face in the water. I often see horses in clouds, wallpaper patterns, and well, any pattern at all will eventually become a horse if I look at it long enough.

I'm in an exhausted haze right now from chasing Baasha up our hill. He wouldn't come when I called him, so I ran him down, except that it was up, up, up, and at the top, I whacked him and chased him back down again. I'm so tired I'm seeing horses in water now.

I'm less mad at him than Monday. He did much better, and check it out, it was even MORE horses this time. I had been riding him up and down hills 2 full hours before our meetup time, and you know, that's really stupid. You cannot wear down an Arab. You just cannot. I knew this, I was just hoping.




I met an Arabian horse photographer - she traveled to Egypt recently and visited the stud farms there and her work is in a gorgeous calendar with Arabians prancing and playing in front of the Giza pyramids. She was so excited to meet Baasha. She brought a fancy jeweled Arabian halter and let me put it on him. He's never worn one of those! I said "I'll hire you to come to my farm and get pics after he has a bath of course! I'd love some photos of me riding too, cuz I hardly have any good ones." She's excited about it - she kept saying how pretty Baasha was when he was jigging angrily down the trail. I said "Yes, when he's naughty, he's pretty, but I have to apologize about this behavior!" and she said "The naughtier the prettier!" (It's true, sadly. Baasha's butt looked really pretty as he ran away from me up the hill tonight, tail waving in the air. What a brat!)



I got pictures of the barn as the ladies got their horses ready. One lady immediately told me to use the informal form of the language with her and I accidentally used it with the photographer lady too, oops. I hate that. But as an American I have a certain amount of grace when it comes to abusing the formal/informal language rules.

I fell in love with that barn - the stalls are double sized - some were quadruple, just amazing, with whitewashed brick and glass windows. The normal sized stalls were used as storage areas.









All the stalls had concrete floors without mats - typical.










The stalls surround a little brick courtyard where we got the horses ready. I bet in Winter it's totally cozy with all the horses watching what's goin on in the middle.










The photographer lady gave Baasha 4 apples and he even ate dried bread from her hand, like all the German horses. He's adapting to the culture of bread eating! Note how big that stall is behind him - it is deep as well as long - perhaps 30 feet square!

The ladies graciously let me lead for the first 20 minutes or so of our trailride, and Baasha was mostly good. Still kind of rushy, hoping a horse behind him would challenge him to a race or something. Finally I could hear Merlin growling and I said "Please, let me practice following for a while!" Merlin needs help too, I said to Kerstin, "We can help each other with our competitive geldings". Somehow I ended up behind each of the horses today, and the rider of the mare was like "Please pass us, my horse cannot handle you being so close" I apologized. Then the big chestnut gelding's rider said "Please pass us, you're too close." I apologized.

Merlin and Baasha are the same kind of bad, they don't care about personal space, they just want to be in front. Side by side, though, it's magic, they're both perfect. Merlin fruck out a bit today when he got really sick of following, he was sidepassing down the trail and off the trail. Exactly the kind of crap Baasha used to do during orienteering rides. We let him go first when we saw the danger Kerstin was in. There's a picture of Merlin - I'll have to get a pic of his tail next time - I've never seen a tail like this - it's as thick as 4 normal horse tails together. Or, like someone put *2* of those fake Quarter Horse tails on him. At least 2. Amazing.

I feel confident that the main reason Baasha behaved himself slightly better today in a group was the biting flies. These horrible flies came out today and harrassed the horses. I have no idea what kind of fly they are. Long and narrow, and they stick on and bite til the horses bleed. Kerstin called them "Bremsen" and that translates to "horsefly" - hm. I don't think we had these blood-sucking flies in Seattle. Baasha was beside himself trying to get them off and at one point I had to just jump off him and jump to the side and let him fight it out. He was covered in flyspray, by the way. Phooey.

As we parted ways, Isabel and her friend Sonja were walking the trails and encountered us. I said goodbye to the ladies - apologized again for Baasha's behavior - and walked home with Isabel and Sonja. Baasha was soaking wet from sweat (from being naughty) and had flecks of blood on him from those flies. I was happy to lead him home with the girls. Then there was this pretty little donkey, who for some reason was interested in us as we passed, and started making donkey noises and following us. Baasha went crazy. So glad I wasn't on him! His eyes bugged out and he snorted loudly, "What's this creature!!!" Good grief, it's a donkey. It would have been the perfect moment for a photograph.

Now we're home and I'm exhausted! I'm hopeful that if this continues, this riding in groups, it will get better.