smellshorsey

Tiger Stows Away to Riding Lessons

Second outing with the new used Yukon. Everything is great. Buddy hopped in the trailer with extra energy. We got off on time. We pull out on the highway and I glance over my shoulder before I change lanes only to see something that almost makes me scream:
Yes, Tiger is in the backseat on the way to riding lessons. He's quite comfy and not at all bothered.

It's too far down the road to turn around. So while Lily has her lesson I cat-sit Tiger. It wouldn't do to have him "Christen" the new truck. Tiger even has a chance to look at the scenery.

He never once meowed. He's always up for a road trip. He spent the day with the horse vet once by accident, going on all his rounds.

Lily said, "Don't let him get out of the truck. He might hurt the dogs." Tiger has attitude. A big one.

Our First Outing in Our New, Used Yukon

I already told you that for Lily's 13th birthday she wanted a new truck and things happily went her way with Paul's car dying and his needing to replace it. It's a burgundy 2005 GMC Yukon that is really not a wise purchase with the price of gas, but Paul and I are switching off with my Prius. Whoever is driving the most that day gets the Prius. Paul is not crazy about the Yukon -- he said he loved his Passat, which he could have continued to love while sitting in it while on the side of the road waiting for help. I haven't figured out how to get into the Yukon gracefully because I'm 5'3" and there's some climbing involved. I think it's kind of fun. Paul says that all he sees when he looks at it is how much he loves his daughter. This will probably be her car when she is old enough to drive and Paul will get to go back to a sedan.

 

This Yukon is great but it really does puzzle me why there are so many on the road. Unless you're pulling a trailer, what are all those non-horse-people doing driving all those Suburbans, Expeditions, Yukons, etc.? A rant for another day.

Lily and I took the Yukon out yesterday to her riding lesson -- our first official trailer-pulling outing. It was amazing.

• Lily was delighted that the passenger door shut on the first try. The door catch on Ben is worn out on all but one cog tooth, so you had to slam Ben's door five or six times for the thingie to rotate around to the one good tooth in order for the door to shut. All doors but the driver's door were just as bad. Ben took a lot of slamming, and sometimes we just gave up and rattled on down the road.
• The left blinker on the trailer worked! Nobody flipped me the bird when I changed lanes.
• When I put on brakes, the trailer didn't go into a skid. Everything just stopped in a reasonable fashion.
• When I saw a friend on a country road, I could roll down the window and say, "Hey! How's your Mama and dem?" and have a conversation. When I was driving Ben, people thought I was unfriendly, but the truth was that the window wouldn't roll down. Or, if it did, it wouldn't roll back up.
• I didn't keep the fire extinguisher in my lap just in case we suddenly burst into flame.

What luxury! Life is good, even at $3.11/gallon.

Other than the button to push that puts it in trailer pulling mode and the radio, I have absolutely no idea how to work this vehicle. I feel sure that I'll be learning how to fill it with gas. Heavens. We really may be eating cat food.

What a Horse Girl Wants for Her 13th Birthday

Lily turned 13 last week. Her biggest desire is for the means to go places -- to Pony Club, horse shows, trail rides, whatever. So she was dying for a truck and either repainting our trailer or getting a new one. (Note: She's not old enough to drive. Yet.)

Fortunately for her, Paul's Passat died. I could write several pages about our disappointment with Volkswagens. I've driven nothing but VWs since 1979 and have had wonderful experiences driving them until the wheels fell off at 200,000+ miles. I love them! They're fun to drive and economical, too. But the Passats we recently bought were another story. Google VW oil sludge for massive complaints. Mine died last year and we had to sell it for junk, which it was. Paul's was recently diagnosed as having only three months to live, so in spite of being a relatively young car (for us), he had to get something else. (VW has some kind of loophole going where they're not responsible for the oil sludge problem unless you can document all your oil changes and show that you used nothing but synthetic oil. Since they didn't make this announcement until we had had the cars for a few years and didn't keep meticulous records of our oil changes, we were sunk. So we've divorced VW.)

Back to the dilemma. Does Paul get a car and we keep using Ben to pull the trailer? Or does Paul get something that can pull a trailer that he'll drive everyday?

After much angst, deliberation and finally resolve, he bought a two-year-old Yukon. The things you do for love! Now Lily can go places beyond the local farm where she takes her lessons. This was a surprise for her. Paul drove up in it for the first time while Lily was feeding the horses. She dropped everything and came running. I managed to catch a moment or two with my camera. Click on the photos to enlarge.

Because Her Dad Pulled Her to Horse Shows

Today was riding lesson day. It was also the day the National Guard was flying. A pair of F-16s kept roaring over. It's hard to find them in the sky because the sound is one place and the jets are in another. I tried to take a picture with my cell phone. They were too fast and my phone was too slow. It was a strange but beautiful mix of worlds -- girls riding horses on the ground and jets that stop me in my tracks every time I see them streaking up above, which is often.

I trailered Lily and Buddy to a nearby farm for their lesson, and then got to talking to a father of a teenage girl who lives and breathes horses who was there getting ready for a show this weekend.

The conversation started because I wanted to know how he liked his truck because there's a new truck in our future. And he began to tell me about how he wished that his daughter didn't like horses because of all the reasons we know why it's not the easiest or cheapest sport. And the more he talked, the more the truth came out.

First, there were all the reasons that were so well put by a mother in this post. And then he came to something that was pretty special for a father.

Because he pulled her and her horse to horse shows and Pony Club, they got to spend a lot of time together. Because he gave up his weekends and Saturdays so that she could have experiences and memories, those memories will include being with her dad (and mom). And one day, she'll even realize how much trouble it was for them.

Because he was with his daughter at horse shows in nice places, he sometimes got to sneak off and play some golf at courses away from home, so this wasn't all about self-sacrifice. He showed her how he could have fun and still make sure she was doing what she lived to do.

And most of all, because he spent all this time with her doing something as mundane as driving a truck and moving heavy objects and standing by the ring watching things he sometimes didn't even understand, they've grown closer.

They've got a good relationship. And when she goes off to college and beyond, they'll still have a special connection. In telling me all this, he suddenly didn't feel like he'd driven all that many miles. Instead of going far, he had drawn closer to home.

Horses bring us many blessings. Sometimes we just have to know where to look.

One Way to Do Vehicle Research

The farrier was here this morning. He's got the most incredible truck I've ever seen -- it's got a built-in forge and what looks like a complete machine shop in the back. And it's immaculate. Everything about this man is professional, and he's as nice as he can be.

Paul's looking for a truck or SUV he can drive that can also be used to pull the horse trailer (my Prius is wonderful and gets awesome mileage, but it's not pulling anything). Paul's never done so much research before buying a car before.

I asked the farrier how he decided what kind of truck to get. He said, "When I was having my Chevrolet towed yet again, I asked the tow truck man what kind of vehicle he had towed the least. He said, 'A Dodge,' so that's what I bought."

He just hit 100,000 miles with his Dodge and hasn't had any trouble. Pretty clever way to do vehicle research and a lot less wear and tear than reading through all the reports.

Horse Trailers: Ramp-Load or Step-In?

Santa won't be bringing me a horse trailer, so this is all academic. Horse people seem very committed to one type of horse trailer or the other -- either you're a ramp-load kind of person, or a step-in. And from my observations, you can predict which kind of person someone is based on whether they ride English or Western. English riders use trailers with ramps. Western riders use step-ins.

I was a ramp person once I was the one buying the trailer. It worked great. Horses got in and out very sanely and decently. Then one day a friend wanted me to ride with her to a show a few counties away and offered to come pick me and my horse, Jack, up. Though she had a sideline of buying TBs off the track, retraining them as hunters and selling them, she had a step-in trailer (so much for my theory but she was from out West). All was fine. Jack liked her horse just fine. He liked her trailer just fine. We arrived at the showgrounds in time for me to school and get to my first class. In theory.

Here's a not very good scan of a photo of Jack (that's me riding). I'll try to post a better one later. Well. Jack, who was a very nice, cooperative horse, got spooked when he backed carefully toward the trailer door, as always, and when he reached his hoof back for the ramp, it wasn't there. In fact, he reached a little farther down, and there was no ground. I was obviously unloading him over a bottomless canyon, and he pulled his hoof back up as fast a cat who'd accidentally stuck his paw in the water. Then Jack squished his 16.2 frame as far into the trailer as he could get. He wasn't getting out. He was going to be very small and very much in the front.

We did nice things to him to get him to back up. We tried to entice him with Good Things. We reasoned with him. Then we did not nice things to that wonderful horse to get him to back up. We did even worse things to him to get him to back up. Nothing doing. Jack wasn't about to fall into the bottomless canyon. A couple of times we got him to put his dainty little hoof back into the air, but each time he quickly withdrew it before the alligators got it. His mind was made up, and he would endure ANYTHING not to get out of that trailer.

It was painful for everybody. Eventually, a brave stranger came over. "Need help?" I offered to have his children.

He helped us remove the center partition of the two-horse trailer. And then he helped us bend that big horse into a U-shape and turn himself around (scary, because if Jack slipped or panicked we were at risk). But Jack was not panicked or silly. He just wasn't going to step where he couldn't see. So he bent himself into a U-shape and walked out of the trailer. Then we put the trailer back together again. I'd missed a couple of my classes, which was too bad, because we ended up with a Reserve Championship that day. Oh well.

We got him out at home by finding a high spot of ground and backing the trailer against that. When Jack felt earth, he got out just fine.

When Lily was two, I thought I'd never ride again and sold Jack and my trailer. Life had changed so drastically. Now that I'm back "doing" horses, the best deal we could get on a trailer was a step-in, and so far, all the horses are coping just fine. I wonder how Buddy would load in a ramp-load trailer. Since he likes to hop in (Buddy is all about jumping), I wonder if he'd just skip the ramp-part and jump right over it into the trailer.

I think I detect a little snobbery between the ramp vs. step-in crowd. At this point, as long as it's safe and it rolls, I'll take it. But I hope I never, ever have to take a trailer apart to turn a large TB around to get him out.

If you have a trailer, what kind and why? What are your theories? What's your dream trailer? Here's mine (this is not an ad, unfortunately).

Things I Am Thankful for -- I Think

I have so much to be thankful for that I don't know where to start. A husband who's supportive and encouraging of our horse habit, a daughter who'd rather be at the barn than at the mall and two great horses who are mostly willing and certainly able.

I also have a truck and trailer. Now, you will not envy me on this. Even if you don't have a truck and trailer, you will not envy me. But that truck and trailer mean that we can go to nearby farms. And that makes all the difference.

"Ben," the truck (he came named -- "Ben" for Sub-ur-BEN) can qualify for S.C. antique license plates next year. Or maybe he's already qualified. The people who had him loved him and took excellent care of him. They had a book where they kept track of every tank of gas he ever drank and every repair ever made. The lady drew a sad face with tears and wrote "Goodbye Ben, We Love You!" on the last page of this book before selling him to us. His interior was re-done before we got him. (After a while you get used to calling your truck a "him.") He does have a drinking problem, though. Heaven help us. I might sometimes get over 60 mpg on my Prius, but I more than make up for it with Ben.

The trailer I own with my niece. It needs re-painting. I touched up the rusting spots with Rustoleum, which makes it look even worse. One day we will paint it. Surely we will.

Anyway, Ben has lots of personality and Tim, my mechanic, says, "That's a great truck." It is. It's even kind of fun to drive. No problem finding it in a parking lot, either.

But I have to say when I pull up besides people's fancy trucks and SUVs and trailers with dressing rooms and awnings and potted flowers, I do feel like country come to town. Actually, there's another term I'd use but I won't.

Other people's trucks and trailers might be painted to match. Ben and my trailer have rust spots to match.

We're lucky to have nice horses, tack, boots and lessons. I like to think of it that we're just being environmentally friendly by using a truck and trailer others would have passed on.... The most environmentally friendly thing you can do is to use things as long as possible, right? No landfill and all that? (There is Ben's drinking problem, but I can't help that.) I could have bought something other than the Prius that would pull a trailer, but I decided on the Prius because I don't pull the trailer but once a week, but I drive the Prius everywhere every day.

Anyway. Ben's got a lot of personality for a truck. He came with lots of stickers on him and a front license plate that says "U.S. Army Retired." I left everything as it was. The stickers might be holding him together! I'm really glad the people weren't NASCAR fans or I'm sure he'd have an "8" and a "3" on him. For some reason, the sticker that said, "My daughter is in the U.S. Navy" just drove Lily over the edge, so I let her cover that sticker and another one. I am not one to put  bumper stickers on cars (my Prius has none), but if somebody else has started it, well.... See for yourself.

I live in fear that Ben is going to leave us on the side of the road one day. I guess when that happens we'll unload the horses and ride on home.

Ben, you're an old, old man, but I'm still thankful to have you, even if I am afraid to drive you very far.