Tally Ho and away we go and come back...

And moving once again, after sitting for a week allowing my horse to heal enough to move again. The vet prescribed one week of rest to allow the leg to mend enough to walk on, then she said walking on the road is pretty much the same as walking in a pasture. So one week later, leg looking nearly fully healed, and after a tense few days of Strip peeing what looked like blood and turned out to be a reaction to the sulfa drugs given by the vet that stitched her up, we got back under way. The original plan was to ride to the coast in short hops of 12 to 15 miles, but after a visit with the folks that run Flying M Ranch I discovered that the forest service has shut down all the roads between there and the coast. So we decided to just head for the ranch on the 4th of July. Strip and I headed out around 12:30, moving out in our usual 5 mph walk. I rode the first 3 miles before hopping off for the next 3, she just doesn't seem to understand why I get off and walk, and proceeded to nudge me every few dozen yards or so. After I got back on, she resumed our normal moving walk and we made short work of the rest of the distance on the pavement, turning off onto the Old RailGrade road. We had gone about a mile when we came to a wooden bridge, long and made of rail ties and 2 by 6's, I hopped of and we walked across without incident. I was just reaching the other side when little girl in the river below called out "Look Daddy a pretty horsey" and he not responding immediately caused her to scream "look look look" over and over, that freaked my up until this time calm horse and replaced her with an Arab. I swung back up, she spun and started to take off up the road. I slammed her to a halt and told her to walk, she decided to jig . . . for 3 miles . . . that action not only beat my bad knee to pieces, but also made my tender tailbone unhappy. By the time we reached the camp site, and Jessica, Strip was lathered and finally walking and I was soaked with sweat and still fuming. We both calmed down, somewhat, and the camp was set up and eventually we all got some rest. The next morning it was back to Alexis and James', making it all but the last few miles before my horse became the evil Arab again. I sit on the front porch of A&J's new house and watch my girl sleeping in the shade below and I just want to poke her, that little creep. Tomorrow we are off to go through Newberg on our way to Champooie (sorry no Idea how to spell that right now), hopefully it will be with no evil jigging horse behavior, my back side couldn't take it.