Hobo the Amazing Wonder Horse

I love the feeling of vertigo. Since I don’t do drugs, I can only imagine what it might be like to be high on marijuana and watch a segment of CSI or Boston Legal where they fly over the city above some of the highest structures in the world looking down at the streets and cars below. I already find it completely intoxicating watching this while stone cold sober. Perhaps that’s the reason I took up skydiving even though I’m quite terrified of heights. Well, maybe I’ll blog about my skydiving days another time but right now I want to talk about Hobo the amazing wonder horse.
I suppose I should apologize for not writing anything in my blog for a whole year but I won’t. I just didn’t feel like it. It’s not that nothing happened… in fact it was quite an interesting year, so I may backtrack a bit once in a while. In the meantime, I’ll catch up a bit on the chickens:
Gertie is fine but her baby got eaten by a snake. Needless to say, she was beside herself with grief. She did however have 4 more chicks and they disappeared from right under her (literally) the very next day. She seemed to take that in stride but I was very upset. Miguel and I flushed out a 6 foot Blacktail snake from under the coop the next day and disposed of it. I think you can put that all together without explanation.
A very nice lady from Armenia (the village in Cayo, not the country across the Atlantic) who works at Puccini’s in Belmopan gave us 2 small Belizean chickens to replace the two others that died; one from a respiratory illness and the other, a victim of the snake. About 4 months ago, Gertie hatched 6 healthy baby chicks. This was a marvelous feat for a chicken with no rooster. Okay, we cheated a little. Eggs fertilized from 3 different roosters were brought to her from Armenia Village. There are 2 black chicks, 2 yellow, 1 brown and 1 white. Gertie loves them all and they get along together famously.
Let’s talk about Hobo. Hobo went to horse training school and learned all the good things a great riding horse should know. I started riding him and we went together on many enjoyable outings. He did however have a teeny tiny little flaw. It seems he did not like to walk or trot or stop when asked to, so riding him was a bit of a challenge. It wasn’t that he would not walk or trot, but it was a constant struggle to keep him at a comfortable pace. I was given lots of advice of course. “Put a harsher bit on him.” “Run him for miles and miles every day until he gets tired.” “Sell him.” “Shoot him.” The list went on and on. I refused to do the first but did try the second. The result of this was that he was even harder to handle and wanted to run even more and further and became no fun at all to ride. I persisted and still rode him every day. He seemed to be getting better so I decided to take him down Prayer Mountain Road. The scenery was lovely, the road sandy and good for footing as well as tree lined for shade. It couldn’t have been a nicer ride. After about an hour the road changed to more of a grassy driveway with brush on both sides. It was extremely pretty; the perfect laneway, flat and solid. Since Hobo had been such a perfect gentleman, walking, trotting, loping and stopping on cue every time, I asked him for one more canter before turning around to go home. Off we went at a nice steady comfortable pace. A couple of minutes later I asked for a stop so we could turn around and head back home. Hobo’s reaction was “He, he, he… I’m just getting started,” and began to run faster. I leaned back and pulled the reins tighter while asking for a “whoa” to no avail. By this time he was running at breakneck speed and admittedly I began to panic. I pulled on the reins until his chin was touching his chest and he still ran on and on. At this point I was pleading and begging him to stop. Instead of stopping he pulled his head forward, pulling me forward as well, connecting my right ribs to the pommel of the saddle. I decided to give him his head back, thinking that he must be getting tired by now and would stop very soon. This proved to be incorrect. On he ran. Thus far the route was still grassy and straight, but I spotted a sharp turn to the left coming up and since I was using an Australian saddle with no horn to grab onto I thought (funny how the mind works quickly in survival situations) “I have two choices; one: grab his mane and try to stay on (I had long since taken my feet out of the stirrups because I would rather be thrown than dragged), or two: bail”. I opted to bail. Since I hoped he was going to slow down a little for the turn, then jumping off would be my best option. I landed on my feet, did a PLF (parachute landing fall) on a nice soft grass patch and watched as Hobo tore off into the distance and around another corner.
To be continued… If you’re so inclined to be curious