Dogged endeavours

[glenatron]

Following on from my questions of a week or two back I did end up getting a new phone and it's a very dapper little creation, powered entirely by androids and determined to bring about the destruction of humans by any means imaginable. Going from a very old Nokia to a very new HTC Hero has basically overawed me with gadgetty goodness and so I've got total new toy syndrome at the moment and I'm doing everything I can with it.

This includes using the GPS to record our routes, so I can safely say that today our ride was 6.12 miles long and that our average moving speed was 3.7mph. Which, given that we trotted quite a bit and had some ( slightly overexcited and bucky ) canter in a few places, suggests that our walking speed is a trifle sluggish. We're working on it.



A single pine out on the edge of the marsh.


The grave of some long-forgotten king - the mound at the foot of those pines is a round-barrow dated to the middle bronze age, probably the burial mound of some significant individual from the local community of 4000 years ago.


A single silver birch, momentarily golden with october leaves, on the edge of the wide heath.


The trail ahead lit up by Sycamore and Chestnut leaves. It's been quite blustery so I'm guessing by next weekend most of the trees will be bare and we'll be all set for winter, but right now it's still very pretty.

Edit: I'm not entirely content with any of those pictures, apart maybe from the round-barrow. The horizons out on the heath are rather hard to judge and trees often seem to want to grow a little off vertical which makes an objective frame of reference rather hard to find, especially when one is taking pictures from horseback, where I find the difference in height can make perspectives come out funny as well. Actually they're probably fine as pictures, probably it only bothers me because I was there and they're not quite right.

The ride did have one significant downside unfortunately - as we came up to the trail off the common I saw a grey-haired couple ahead of me with a golden retriever and a black-and-tan egyptian looking dog ( the kind with those funny Anubis ears on it ) who looked very interested in us. They vanished off around the corner ahead but shortly afterwards I spotted the black-and-tan dog running flat out on a long loop around our right about a hundred yards away. It looked a lot to me as though he'd gone into some kind of hunting or herding mindset that likely to end badly for us so rather than going on down the ( narrow, wooded and barbed-wire fenced ) path off the common I was planning to take, we stopped and turned to face where I thought he'd come from and sure enough ten seconds later he came shooting out of the bushes and zoomed towards us making some growly-barky sounds and straight past as Zorro reared at him and span to follow him. I'm pretty sure that if I'd not been paying attention he'd have had a nip at Zorro's heels and someone ( or maybe everyone ) there would have been injured to some degree. As it was we had quite a scare, enough that I got off for a few yards so Zorro didn't feed off my adrenaline and we could both calm down a bit before riding back up the road. It worked fine and the rest of the ride was calm but I'll probably have a hell of a time persuading him that corner of the common is safe next time we go there.

I did think to catch up with the dog's owners to let them know that they were putting other people in danger - could have been a child, could have been a more flighty horse that would have bolted and quite possibly gone straight over them given which way the dog was running - but frankly Zorro wasn't going to get within fifty metres of that dog and I could understand that pretty well.

To counterbalance that, earlier in the ride we met a couple with a little terrier who they had trained to stay still when horses approached. I told them how much we appreciated that.

Comments

[foalstory.livejournal.com]

GPS! welcome to the technological age :D

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

Wanting that was largely because of your trail ride posts and it does not disappoint. Really cool!

[foalstory.livejournal.com]

you are welcome then :) and really? everyone I know who's starting using the app on the iphone or getting a separate GPS device, LOVE it. it's really just so useful and FUN :D

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I am a bit OCD about maps and routes at the best of times so this is kind of living the dream for me at the moment as I record half the places I go and then think things like "200 feet ascended? Amazing!"

[skye-ds.livejournal.com]

My horses are trained to kick on command. Solves many obnoxious problems on trails. *hugs*

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

Zorro would be only too happy to killinate things, I'm just not sure he'd think of me particularly hard when it came time to vacate the crime scene...

[velessa.livejournal.com]

I just think it's so cool you have remnants of such ancient history right at your fingertips. Amazing.

[skye-ds.livejournal.com]

Having been trained to mounted security, ours just killinate on command, no vacating the crime scene without permission.

(We've been attacked by pit bulls, blue healers, bicyclists, drunks, etc...)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

The grave of some long-forgotten king

I keep forgetting that people live in places where they can say that kind of thing and not, actually, be kidding. So cool.

[dreamswept.livejournal.com]

That tomb mound must have been awfully neat. I dunno if I've ridden anywhere half as cool just by going out on the trails.

There are historical places around, but most of the time, you really have to plan to go there rather than just going out for a ride and running across them.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I read that as "blue heaters" and wondered how those attack or whether your horses only tolerate heating in certain colour schemes.

So how have you done that training?

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

It's pretty cool- we used to get chippings from flint arrowhead construction turning up in the arena at one yard we had and most of the villages around us turn up in the Domesday book, so it's an old area in an old land.

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

The village where the ponies live is called Thursley, the name originating from "Sacred Grove of Thunor" - back in Saxon times ( before they built the church, which is still partly the structure they built ) it was probably the site of a temple to Thunor, the Saxon name for Thor.

History, we has it :)

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

We're pretty lucky in that respect, although we don't have big prehistory like you might find in a lot of other parts of the country we do have some not very well-known stuff and the more you look into it the more you find...

[skye-ds.livejournal.com]

It began by necessity. First we had to deal with one neighbor's pack of mangy (the kind of mange that's contagious to horses & humans as well as dogs) pack of pit bull - blue healer crosses. They were deliberately turning them loose to interfere with our riding lessons, which are almost always with young children (most under 12 - 13).

Then we started doing Mounted Security Patrol for the Society for Creative Anachronism. Training there was done by folks who are professional mounted patrol. The horses underwent police type training here > http://www.mountedpatrol.com

Then we started doing security for Eeyore's Birthday, which is a 200,000+ party full of pot smoking, beer drinking hippies in Austin. (http://www.eeyores.com/) Drunk people with pit bulls trained to fight, off leash, around hundreds and thousands of children.

Anyway, most places around here that have mounted police will let you bring your horse to complete their training courses. Example, Bexar County > http://bcmpatrol.org/

It's come in VERY handy. Dog or bicyclist or whatever threatens horse. Horse alerts me to threat. Horse asks nicely for permission to kick. I have a very limited amount of time to let horse know yes, or no. And of course, if the answer is No, I express No by giving horse something else to do, since horses don't understand "don't," but they *do* understand "do" something else. If I don't expressly give our horses something else to do, they will go to town on whatever dog, bicyclist or whatever is threatening us.

It's not that hard to train either. I incorporate it into the "spooking in place" lessons, wherein I teach our horses in general to spook in place rather than bolt.

As much as y'all enjoy clinics (and I envy you, would love to go with you), you would very likely really enjoy mounted patrol training, if it's available over there...?

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of it being taught outside the police or of non-police riders being able to take part in the police courses. I wonder if there are people teaching it and if not whether someone could be found to if we could get a group together.

How long did are the courses you have done?

[skye-ds.livejournal.com]

Two days is more or less average.

[skiesfirepaved.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I want GPS! *covets* Although mine and Pepsi's average speed will probably be significantly less, haha.

Also, stupid, stupid dog and stupid owners. I hate that. Some people need a common sense injection; well done for anticipating his drive by barking, though, and for sitting Zorro's rear!

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

Probably not less than Zorro's walking speed to be honest. My walking speed is a lot faster than his. Probably getting on for double it, in fact...

[dancing-crow.livejournal.com]

exactly - we have a lump like that in the landscape, it is either glacial or constructed

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

The one in the picture was dismissed as a sand dune following archaeological investigations in the 1950s, but a more recent dig found proof it was man made and - I believe - evidence of cremations there.

[penella22.livejournal.com]

The GPS does sound really cool...I didn't realize that you too had an old Nokia. Mine is *ancient* and has been dropped about a million times and goes right on working. I haven't traded it in for a newer phone yet and am so glad as it seems all the new ones break in only a few months. Mine is so old the model number has worn off of it, but it's one solid piece, not a flippy clamshell phone like so many are these days.

The only thing that concerns me about it is how very hot it gets when in extended use...

The mound is very cool, and next time, call to the people with the dogs even if you have to yell because yes, someone else's life very well may depend upon it.

Hmm...Sage walks much faster than I do...unless there's anything edible in sight, which is actually just about always...

[glenatron.livejournal.com]

Ah, but when the snow comes he'll be able to tow you, for fun and profit!