Annapolis Rock

Saturday's hunt was at Annapolis Rock, which is so beautiful I love it, it is my favorite place. Public property and part of Patuxent State Park. After a very slow and boring hunt on Wednesday at Oakdale, this one was more fun. Highlights include:

• Arrived at farm to find just Dale. No-one else there to help. So, it was me and Dale getting 5 horses cleaned up, tacked up and loaded on the trailer. This was apparently by design but Dale had not thought it necessary to tell me in advance. The 5 horses were her horse for the day (Rory), my horse (Burton), Barry the Whip's horse (Doris aka Giggles), and the Scranton's two horses (Thor (enormous) and Lad (minuscule)).
• I ended up actually loading them all while Dale changed into her hunt clothes. One of the many benefits of Dale's hunt horses is they sure know how to load. Dale's 5-horse trailer requires all 5 horses to back into their stalls once they are up the ramp and in the truck, and these guys pretty much do it on their own. They also will walk up the ramp on their own, generally speaking. But I was still proud of myself for getting them all on and in the rights stalls and then closing and locking up the trailer sufficiently satisfactory that Dale didn't have to correct me on anything (Dale is scary).
• We had a jolly time in the truck on way over talking about sorts of things that horsie women talk about -- I think we will end up getting along just fine. [If I've neglected to mention it, Dale is the barn manager at Pleasant Prospect and also one of the Whips for the club (like Barry), which means she rides out around the hunt field rounding up hounds that have gone astray and trying to get them back to the pack, etc. She carries a very large whip with her and sometimes a gun. She trains foxhunters. She's very no nonsense and sorta scary.]
• Get to fixture early -- we are first ones there. It is pitch black and pouring rain. Torrential. Couldn't hear one another talking. So we sat glumly in truck waiting for either a) the sun to come up, b) the rain to stop, or c) the Scrantons to arrive to take their horses off the trailer. While we were in the truck we signed all the paperwork re acquisition of Burton so at least it wasn't a waste of time. Some other trailers arrived and their drivers sat glumly in their trucks waiting, too.
• The rain let up and then the sun came up (still no Scrantons, Dale was cursing up a storm "they're LATE!" she spat) so Dale and I got out of the truck and went back to unload.
• While we were still in the trailer putting bridles on the horses, Roger comes over to sign some sort of Master of the Hunt paperwork that Dale had for him and that had to do with preservation easements somewhere He observes that it is just me and Dale dealing with the 5 horses. Then he goes away.
• I end up having to get Giggles over to Barry by the hound truck, then help the Scrantons get up (they cannot girth and stirrup themselves, not sure why), then I had to block Dale's horse into a mounting block so she could mount (horse apparently walks off if you don't), and then and only then was it time for me to get on Burton. So I was the last one up.
• Once I was up Roger came over to me and said, "So you're unchaperoned already?!" I thought he either meant I was riding without my usual cadre of friends or was wondering why I wasn't in the back with Carter. I said something like, "what you think I need a chaperone in the field even now that I have Burton?" He just looked at me. Then I said, "You'd be proud of me though -- it was just me and Dale at the farm and we got 5 horses ready and loaded ourselves and were still the first ones here!" He said, "that's what I meant by unchaperoned -- Dale does not let most people help her get ready in the a.m." Oh.
• Then Roger looks at me again and tells me to go introduce myself to the guest he had brought with him and admonishes me that "she is looking for people to ride with so you might invite her on a trail ride or something." I dutifully went off to find said guest, thinking that I had just received my first direct order from the Master in my capacity as an actual member. Guest turned out to be sorta deadly dull and without a horse of her own (was riding Roanoke) so now I'm thinking Roger expects me to invite her to ride Burton on a trail while I twirl around in crazy madness on Kona trying to make him brave enough to walk by a daffodil. Hmm.
• By now it was 7 a.m. so we moved off. I rode with my new friend Julia in the first field who rides a nice 17.3 tall grey thoroughbred/warmblood cross thingy who is very sensible and who has a pace that works well in front of Burton when we are running. We were number 12 and 13 in the field respectively -- there were probably about 40 riders total. It was still raining slightly but only enough to keep us from getting hot.
• Annapolis Rock is, as I said beautiful. I love it. Mostly woods and lots of different kinds of woods and lots of space and nice footing, etc. Pine woods and tamarack woods and oak woods and everything in between. In the woods we did not really get wet from the rain.
• Our biggest adventure was an impressive ditch obstacle. Julia and I see up ahead that something is happening because riders are disappearing momentarily and then re-emerging with much rocking and arm flailing and scrambling noises and strange positioning. I saw what appeared to me to be a dark bay horse going vertically up a hill. I could see his nose and ears and all his neck and his back and the top of the head of the rider and then the horse's tail. It was as if someone had taken a photograph of a horse and rider from an airplane and then hung it vertically on the wall. I thought to myself, "good lord -- something fearsome must be coming. What could it be?" Julia and I peer nervously ahead. It turned out to be a ditch that one approached down a clay-like, slippery incline of about 30 degrees, followed by a cliff-like drop-off of about 1.5 feet, a rocky stream at the bottom for about 4 feet (water burbling in rain), and then a very steep clay-like exit, probably 45 degrees, no cliff, just smooth and slippery. The other side of this ditch was higher than the side we were on. The sensible grey horse Julia was on walked down the incline, stepped off the cliff into the stream, and then pulled himself up the other side with a lot of huffing and gusto. This was what the vertical airplane horse and been doing. Once across the objective was to gallop up the rest of the hill (covered in tamaracks this part) to somewhere (not sure where). Burton observes Julia's horse (must learn its name) and pauses. He appears to be considering whether the gray horse's approach was the most sensible or whether there was a better way. Burton decided the better way was to just jump the entire ditch, bank to bank, without bothering with the 1.5 foot cliff or the stream or the opposite incline. So that's what we did. Which avoided any vertical airplane horse problem and allowed us to be in the air for a quite a nice period of time as the ditch was pretty wide and turned the ditch from a treacherous obstacle into more of an amusement park ride. Then we ran up the hill and I was hooting out "Woo hoo!' which I bet is not proper hunt etiquette.
• Once I catch up to Julia and the rest of the field and stop running I tell Julia how good my horse was since she couldn't see our leap because we were behind her. She said she was not surprised and that I shouldn't ever have any ditch issues with Burton because ditches are his forte (everyone knows Burton, by the way). I said something intelligent like "really?" She said of course Burton was excellent at ditches. "He came from Ireland." I said something intelligent again like, "oh." It turns out that Ireland is riven with ditches from end to end, apparently, and so Irish foxhunters spend their youth cavorting in, out and over ditches. Irish hunt clubs apparently jump ditches alone and in combination with other things (like stone walls, automobiles, hay wagons, etc.) more often than the sort of obstacles we jump (logs, coops, fences). So now I know.
• Later I learned that Burton's ditch performance caused problems for the fellow behind me because his horse (golden palomino draft horse, very fat) thought maybe it could jump the whole thing like Burton did, too -- but either the horses wasn't capable or the rider wasn't capable or both because I am told it did not turn out well for them.
• After that we starting running and jumped very many logs of all different varieties. It was very fun. Some of the logs were close together so we'd run up hills jumping logs every 3 or 4 strides. Some were large and fat and solitary. One was in a bog so we all sank down into the bog on take-off, which had amusing effects on the positions of the rider who had thought he/she was perfectly set for take-off only to find a little less oomph in the horse's hind end than expected and thus a little more contact with the saddle over the obstacle log than desired, if you get my drift.
• Two and a half hours later it was time for me and Dale to get the five muddy and sweaty horses loaded for the trip home. In the truck on the way I told Dale about Burton's ditch and she confirmed his ditch prowess and she told him that she thought it was okay for me to be friends with Julia, "I guess that's okay, I'll allow that!" she said. She said I had to check with her before making any other new friends however, and then proceeded to tell me which hunt members really can't ride, which one's have bad horses, which ones to stay away from under certain conditions, etc. She told me the person on the vertical airplane horse makes EVERYTHING look dramatic and that it is generally best just to look the other way. I told her that Burton was very popular in the field and she said, "so that means you'll be popular, too!" I said, "hooray! finally!" All in all, it was very jolly.
  We decided I must learn to the drive the trailers because some days there as many as three trailers coming from Dale's to the hunt. Also, it seems like a good thing to be able to do in case of emergency, etc. So I will have a trailer driving lesson in the near future, starting with the 2-horse trailer and working up to the 5-horse.
• We go again tomorrow morning, this time from the Kennels.

Oakdale

Amusing and/or interesting items re this mornings ride:

• The scene at Dale's in the morning as quite calm. We loaded two trailers of horses in about 10 minutes (7 horses total). Pretty impressive. Dale has a white board in the barn with that day's hunt horses listed and columns for who's riding them, whether they are in, whether they are clean, whether they are tacked, and whether they are loaded. Only problem was when we arrived at Oakdale two of the horses had managed to literally turn all the way around in their stalls and were facing backwards out of the trailer. ? Dale said we should take a picture and post it as an example of "improper trailering." No clue how they did that, ride was only about .4 minutes long. Dale also said, "well, I guess I'll take these two out the back and not the side." Pretty funny.
• We also arrived at Oakdale without Burton's running martingale. Dale said, "he doesn't really need it, I guess. Although he was in all night and will be peppy." I said, "oh great." Then Dale said that actually I wouldn't need it but that if Crystal were riding Burton they would scurry and find one. She said, "won't be necessary the way you ride." I made some snide insecure comment. She said, "no you dingbat, you don't need it because you ride well!" Turned out I really didn't need it -- Burton was totally fine. Though bored because ride was so slow.
• On hunt, which was mostly walk with only 3 short-ish canters and lots of standing around, we were approached by a herd of deer through some sort of thicket. Roger calls out to staff -- "are they with antlers or without antlers?" It was funny.
• A hound got stuck in a paddock. For a while.
• Ryan was wearing the same stock tie as me -- which, by the way, I tied perfectly.
• Burton tried to pay a social call on the horse in the paddock the hound was stuck in, even though we were trotting by. Bizarre. Don't know what he was thinking.
• At one point I accidentally tossed Burton's reins over his head whilst trying to fix my hair. I felt vaguely like Pattie. Time to buy a hairnet. Fortunately Burton was occupied eating a cornstalk at the time so nothing happened
• Dale admonished me for starting in the back with Adrian. She flailed and smacked at my arm -- "what were you thinking being in the back?!?!" I told her it was all moot anyway since we mainly walked and halted. But next time I guess I will be more in the front. I ended up in the back of the front field, with Carter and Ryan. I was trying to avoid Crystal on her skinny gray thoroughbred. Don't like her.
• Carter taught me some things about hounds. Puppies are the ones with collars. The "H" litter is terrified of horses (that's the one that got stuck in the paddock). A dog that won't move is said to be "smelling and dwelling."
• At the end we had to wait around forever for Dale and Barry to get back because of the aforementioned hound that was STILL stuck in the paddock. Then a hound sat just inside the cornfield staring at Barry and wouldn't come out. Hound sat there staring for a while. Barry crouched 20 feet away making strange noises. Dale eventually had to go get another hound on a leash (i.e., lead line) to fish the scared hound out. Then Barry picked it up and carried it to truck.
• Turns out Barry lives at Pleasant Prospect. Don't tell Petra.
• Dale has an ad in the Equierry for "an aspiring professional foxhunter." Only way you know it's Dale is the phone number. Oh, and the fact that the ad says "thick skin and sense of humor encouraged. Horses must be your #1 priority." (see page 94 of current issue).
  Shipping on hunt days just gets put on my boarder bill. Pretty easy.
• I learned to drive the Gator. Burton has poor Gator manners and trots along side it. I almost fell out of the Gator as a result.
• I talked to Lori in the Gator. She turns out to be okay. She taught me things about how the barn works that I was too afraid to ask Dale so that worked out pretty well. There are very few boarders there. There is one tack room devoted to hunt tack and you don't need to buy your own hunt tack because they have oodles and Dale doesn't care. Then there is another tack room just for boarder tack. The cleaning supplies in the hunt tack room are for communal use which comes with the price that one is actually expected to help clean ALL the day's hunt tack before leaving. So I had to clean 4 bridles and hang up 7 girths. Hanging up the girths would seem easy except they don't have sizes on them anymore so you have to stand there in front of the rack and try to figure out which ones are 52s, which ones are 50s, etc. It took me a long time to do that with seven girths. I felt like I was on Sesame Street.
• The infamous Scrantons are Stephanie and Rob who ride Dale's horses. Dale won't let them meet her at the barn because she doesn't think they're good enough. Dale is scary. Stephanie rides Giggles and Rob rides Thor.

Burton at the Kennels

So I went foxhunting this morning with Burton. The facts are that we had wet conditions and a very large field (50 riders or so) and we got the fox. We hunted for 2.5 hours, we did a lot of running, we jumped several ditches numerous time, one collection of twigs that sprayed up into the air, one small spindly evergreen tree that had fallen over (several times -- it was near the aforementioned ditches), and one large manmade log jump, maybe 2 feet 9 inches high, going uphill. Nobody fell off. No mishaps of which we are aware except my friend Amanda's horse lost both of its left shoes (due to mud).

The story of this hunt is better than that, though. First of all, we went off from the kennels at 7 a.m. The kennels are in Damascus, Maryland, which is where Montgomery County, Frederick County, and Howard County all meet in a point. It is 45 minutes from my house. One has to be there half an hour before setting off to get your horse off the trailer and ready to go before the hounds assemble and start making a racket. So I got there at 6:30. Which means I left my house at 5:30, which means I got up at 5, etc. And this was an easy morning because someone else was grooming my horse and taking him and loading him on the trailer from where he lives to go the kennels in the first place. Soon I won't have that luxury and will have to first drive to barn, prepare animal, load animal, then follow trailer to location for hunting etc. On the upside, as the season progress, start times move back so that by November we're starting off at 11 instead of 7.

The point of this explanation is not to say woe is me I head to get up so early but to explain why when I was driving up 270 this morning it was pitch black. Totally pitch black (it was also raining). In fact, when I got to the kennels at 6:30 it was still pitch black. All the trailers started pulling off the tiny windy road into the kennels with lights on and parked and kept their engines running so that the lights in the stalls would stay on so you could see to put on bridles, etc. The noise and atmosphere was similar a truck stop at night only punctuated with horse-type noises and hounds barking. I am always struck by how the trailers materialize out of nowhere all at the same time and pull off the road in a steady stream.

I began to worry that the sun would not actually rise and we would have to hunt in the dark. I wondered how that would go in the woods. How would we see the jumps? What if the horse in front of me was black? We certainly wouldn't see the fox, etc. But then suddenly at five of 7 the sun rose over the soybean fields and there was light and everybody mounted in a big hurry and we set off.

What followed for the next hour was in retrospect funny but at the time a little annoying. We trot downhill down a paved road (hard on the legs) and then gallop to the right and head madly into the woods. We jump the first ditch, then the twigs sprayed up in the air, then the fallen over evergreen and then come to a sudden stop. We turn around and gallop madly back to the road and continue trotting down it (rather steep at this point). Then we come to a sudden stop. Then we trot up the road the way we had come, turn back into the woods, and gallop madly over the ditch, twigs, evergreen, etc. Another reverse. Gallop over all aforementioned obstacles in reverse order back to the road, canter down the road this time (very noise, hard on the back), sudden stop, reverse back up the hill. Why? we wondered? WHAT IS GOING ON? Every time we reversed the whole field doubled back on itself and one could wave at one's friends farther back in the field as you passed and say "good morning!' and examine animals for lost shoes or wounds or see if anyone had fallen off. But four times in a row of doubling back got annoying.

So we finally galloped out of these woods and into the bean fields and then back down into some other woods and over quite a treacherous ditch and we proceed to repeat that exercise several times -- galloping madly back and forth over the same terrain so that the sides of the ditches got really worn down and squishy and the evergreen got flat from being stepped on by enormous foxhunters, etc. At one point we galloped around two of the four sides of a quite large bean field and we were going so fast I literally could not see very well and there was mud in my face and I had to keep leaning way down to avoid getting hit in the head by trees that lined the field. Was also completely out of breath even though I was not the one actually running. We were going so fast and there were so many of us spread out single file that by the time our master got to the end of the field and went down into the woods, the last person in the field was still just getting off the road and starting off into the beans. I turned around and looked back at us all spread out full tilt at single file at one point and it was really very cool looking. (By the way, bean fields are very pretty this time of year because they are turning yellow and there was fog and a light drizzle and only in the 60s.)

We jumped the manmade log jump, uphill in the woods, with a dazzling display of hunt field etiquette. Everyone went single file, everyone left space in case the horse in front encountered difficulties over the obstacle, everyone approached at an even steady pace, and everyone jumped without incidence with a maximum of stylishness. We were all QUITE PLEASED and did a little cheer for ourselves (Burton stumbled on a soggy wood pulpy thing right at take off but made it over just fine with a lot of cheer and elan.)

The only time I got slightly alarmed was one time galloping down hill. We were going a little too fast, and we were entering a part of the woods with slippery footing and very tight turns and lots of saplings to avoid hitting. I knew that coming up we would have to do a hairpin turn to the right to get back on the trail and I knew we were going too fast to make the turn. So I start to pull Burton up and he was going sufficiently fast that to slow down he had to basically park his hind legs and doing a barrel racing type stop only down hill in the mud, which bounced me up out of the saddle a little bit just at the time that we started weaving through the saplings and heading for the hairpin. So I was up in the air trying not to fall off the front of my horse since we were going downhill and the horse starts weaving and I start weaving the other way (involuntarily) and I end up standing way out in my left stirrup as the horse goes right and I say "Uh-Oh!" pretty loud somehow clamber back on and end up still on to of Burton but without any reins or stirrups and brushing perilously close to little saplings as we continue galloping madly. That was a little scary. My friend Petra in front of me was having similar difficulties as it turned out. But we stayed on.

In general, we did quite an excessive amount of running. We were either standing still or running. Which is "good sport" but very tiring because you basically MUST KEEP GOING and you can't sort of take a rest for 5 minutes or else you will be lost forever in the hinterland. Also, it is very bad form unless you have an injury or some other emergency. It is better to be in the front field than the back field because even though the front field is faster, you get more breaks. If you are in the back field, then you just catch up to the rest of the field and the master runs off again. Burton had a very good time and presumably felt right at home with the drizzle and the wet footing and the fog and mist and the chill. It reminded me of a riding trip I took in Ireland one time where it basically rained for 5 days straight.

When we were all done I learned that riding among us that day was a man who is the joint master of the Golden Vale hounds in Tipperary, Ireland. His name is John Lang. He was very jolly and gay and comes over to say hello to Burton and then the light dawns and I realize that this is the John Lang who actually bred Burton and brought him here from Ireland to begin with. So he tells me all about Burton and it turns out that his farm in Ireland is called Ballycormac Farm and so Burton's official name is Ballycormac Burton. Which I like.

I came home and took a three hour nap under the covers and in my pj's and everything. Next time out is Wednesday morning.....