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The Horse Encounter
November 6, 2003© 2003 Jaye Foucher Seems every musher has a horse story. Finally, so do I... I took the dogs out training at Hill today. I had stopped about 4 miles out and turned around and was resting them and giving them some water, when along came 2 women riding horses towards the team. Since they were headed in the opposite direction of the dogteam I decided to just stand with the lead dogs to make sure the horses could get by the dogteam and then wait awhile to make sure the horses were long gone before we took off again. This would have worked perfectly well, if one of the horses hadn't been mule-headed. Literally. Turns out that "horse" was really a mule (hey, what do I know?). The first woman and her horse (a real one) went past the dogteam without any problems. But that mule just refused to pass the dogs. He balked, he tried to rear, his rider was trying everything to get him past the dogteam but he just plain out flat refused to budge. They don't call them stubborn mules for nothing. So his rider called to the other rider and signalled that they should turn around and head back the way they came. Back past the dogteam comes the other horse, and away they go headed off down the trail in the same direction my team is pointing. This proved to be far too tempting to my dogs. And the parking brake on the rig chose this exact moment to become completely useless. As the team took off down the trail I tried to take a flying leap as the rig went past, but if you've ever attempted to launch yourself at a large Risdon Rig from the side as it's moving you'll know it's nearly impossible to land on it successfully. So off the team went, dragging the rig with it's semi-locked brakes and leaving me (and their water bowls) behind. Luckily the dogs didn't get very far before the rig went a little too far off the side of the trail and got stuck in the brush. I caught up with them and, after snubbing the rig securely to a tree so they wouldn't take off again, was attempting to get the rig unstuck and the harnesses and lines straightened out when the horses came out of a side trail behind us and went on down the trail in the original direction they had been headed before. Appears the riders thought they could just hide from the team temporarily and then wait until we went past before they came back out on the trail and went back down it. Well if they thought they were sneaking something past my dogs, they were sadly mistaken. The dogs spotted them and decided to turn around and chase after them, and I was caught in the middle. When I saw what was about to happen I tried to get the hell out of the way but I wasn't quite fast enough and WHACK, it was like something out of the movies... the gangline caught me across the back of the legs and I got flipped in the air just as the dogs jerked the rig completely around in a 180. As I came back down to earth I caught my leg on the rig somehow (or at least I caught it on something so sharp that it cut my leg, so I can only assume it must have been a corner of the rig) and landed flat on my back with a jarring thud. Ahhh, the joys of training. Needless to say, I've been limping around here and haven't felt this bruised since I was dragged a quarter of a mile down Whatleigh's road last winter behind my sled. And yet, I plan to take them out training again today. Am I nuts, or what? << Back | |
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