Is there no way of ecstacy?
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
T S Eliot
Doru and I are alike in a number of ways. Wake me up suddenly, as happens on most workday mornings, and I will stagger around stiffly until I loosen up and attain my normal vigour. Then I remain active all day long, until sleep claims me late in the evening. (Too late usually!)
Likewise, catch Doru when he is lying down asleep (and he does like to lie down after eating his breakfast, his snores resounding through the barn), and he will take a few moments to loosen up.
It really irritates me when the loadmouths and the people with fluffy bunny mentality immediately claim, when I get the horse to his feet and he makes a few stiff strides, that he is "lame" and cannot be worked. We have a few such people at the barn, as well as a barn manager who describes every stiff horse as "crippled". (I'd hate to think what he'd say if he saw me at 7am on a weekday!)
I know that Doru did a bit too much work on asphalt last week to face the Ridgeway flints for a couple of weeks. That is why I am working him with hoof boots, with which he goes forward untroubled.
But there is no arguing with the inexperienced know-alls who believe themselves expert. The next time someone tries to tell me not to ride, rather than explain the situation again, I think that the answer will be "which part of mind your own f***ing business don't you understand?" Perhaps not the best way, however I am running out of patience. After a couple of thousand miles on the trail, I know my horse fairly well.
My chief critic rides a horse with collapsed heels, atrophied frogs, and frighteningly long toes. She admits that he has awful feet, but takes no action.
I wonder how this matter is supposed to enlighten me?
I would love to have my own yard again, or a home with a barn and field, just to be free from the people with more opinions than knowledge. I'd love to share a barn with a few experienced, joyful, kind trail riders - especially if, like me, they are Old Souls.
Incidentally, an ambulance collected another rider from the barn this morning. She had fallen and broken her back. Another accident where a rider thought that they were "safe" because they were wearing a helmet, irrespective of all the other hazards circulating too freely.
I took Doru out in a warm evening of bright colours and low slanting sun. There were sarcastic remarks as I left. The big roan was flawless (apart from over-interest in vegetation). He was sound in all paces after a day out in the field, though we did not push the paces on a chalk ridge baked dry and hard as iron. Would a barefoot horse in the wild hammer about a dry hill in midsummer, other than to escape danger?
I've worked enough horses and dealt with sufficient problems and abuses to have some idea about equine welfare. I've ridden enough miles on the trail to have a bit of an idea concerning when a horse can go, perhaps more slowly, even if he is not 100% fit. (For how many people or horses attain the perfection of 100% fitness?)
This ride did not start with me in the best state of mind. I will suffer beginners, but I do have a problem with meddlers. Interfering annoys me. But events conspired to bring about an improvement in my spirits. I discovered a group of hikers walking the Ridgeway who had run out of water, and was able to take them to the barn to refill their water containers. It is a hot dry place up there, there are no dwellings along the Ridgeway, no streams or ponds on the chalk, and the few field troughs don't provide potable water.
Being able to do a bit of good to fellow travellers lifted my spirits, even as the warm bright evening softened ill feelings.
If my horse is happy, forward going (by his draught horse standards), level and equal on both diagonals, then he is not unsound. Actually he is sounder than me.
Doru spent a while grazing too, for it seems good to allow my horse to partake of the succulent (if a little dessicated in this weather) chalk hill grassland that is so good for the bones.
Plus Doru was not welding borium onto shoes, which seems to have left me with lungs damaged by cobalt amongst other things. It sees that the tasks involved in running that riding centre have wrecked more than my back, have perhaps shaved a few years off my life too? So, inner parts are spoiled too, mimicking the sun-damaged skin on my forearms.