Older and wiser? Hell no. The benefit of being a young, inexperienced rider is a better ability to recover from injury likely incurred due to said inexperience. That’s why the young possess greater levels of bravado than those of us with brittle bones. But there is a sweet spot on the DoesStupidShit graph. That’s where I am, somewhere on the curve of “kind of youngish” and “experienced enough to do dumb things for funsies.”
I have amassed thousands of riding miles over various terrain, granting what may be considered reckless confidence. Sometimes it isn’t confidence. When you hit high speeds, you adopt the mindset “I cannot fall off, I’d shatter like an antique vase.” Is that manifestation? Probably not. But it was with whatever mindset we’re calling this that I took a recently retired, 6-year-old racehorse I’d only had for 6 months to a fox hunt.
In fairness, the first hunt Mr. Hondo Lane and I attended was a tame, glorified trail ride. We went third field (walk, trot) because though he stood stoically prior to us going out, he amped up the second there was a hint of movement.
As we followed in horses in front of us, I had a self-lecturing moment about how I should’ve taken Hondo for a simple trail ride before the hunt, as he wide-eyeballed shallow ditches, bushes and baby hills. Though I had ridden over it all, Hondo was used to level turf and the gently rolling hills of our home. See what I mean about being dumb? Evidence.
All horses love fox hunting. The question is how well will any given horse and the horse’s rider handle the enthusiasm of their new found passion. Hondo expresses his feelings by jogging sideways and bobbing his head up and down like frustrated autist. Neither vice is intolerable, in fact I prefer them to other emotional outbursts like rearing straight up, crow-hopping, kicking or bucking. My horse acts like Rain Man when the syrup isn’t on the table before the pancakes. I’ll take it.
Hondo solved hills, ditches strange vegetation with a simple and practical method of going faster through the problems. That said, he was a total gentleman and stood still, if not for the head bobbing like an apple in a barrel, when required, say when staff had to reverse field or run through our conga line. This told me he could be reasoned with even if the circumstance at the time seemed unreasonable. Another win for my pee-brained behomoth.
He was just easing into the hunt and understanding his role when the ride was over. That first hunt was not even three miles long, and as we got back to the trailers I knew the problem was two fold: the ride was too short, the ride was too slow.
A beginner rider wants to take it slow and steady. A more seasoned rider knows trying to keep an excited horse slow and steady is where one encounters the most problems. It’s a tug-o-war between the one who has the bigger brain and the one who has the bigger brawn. Sure, we can have discussions about respect and relationship between horse and rider, but you take your five-year-old child to Disneyland and tell him to calm down and not get excited and we’ll see how well that plays out.
After a couple of weeks and a couple of trail rides so Hondo could see nature in an environment that didn’t harken back to his racing days, I took us to Cloudline Hounds in Celeste, Texas. I’d met a number of the members from Cloudline at the Brazos Valley hunt and found them to be more comparable in both age and level of insanity.
This would be Hondo’s first true fox hunt that included speed. See how noble he looks in the photo above? How dignified and regal? Lies. Once the hounds were released and we headed out, Hondo was a 🎶 dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen. You can dance, you can jive, having the time of his life🎶
Let me back up a tiny second here. There are rules in equestrian pursuits that involve horses running in a herd. Horses that kick have red ribbons in their tails. Inexperienced “green” horses have green ribbons in theirs. This tells other riders to back the heck off lest they get a swift kick in the shin. Just common courtesy. Though I brought and intended to weave a green ribbon through Hondo’s tail, he wanted no part of it. So I told him “okay, I bet everyone will know you’re green based on your behavior.” Yes.
We could not stand still, not for one second. Nor was Hondo interested in staying behind anyone where he couldn’t see what was happening. Movement was the answer to the problem, whatever the problem was. Remember, this is my Thoroughbred’s Disneyland. We’re finally at Space Mountain. The last thing I’m going to demand of him is to keep it cool and be clam. Fuck calm. We’re here for the thrills not the chills.
The sweet spot for me and Hondo was the canter. This horse’s canter is poetry, and it’s why I bought him. So long as he and I were moving, preferably cantering, we were in a good zone. Cantering is our happy place.
Not our happy place is not moving. When the hounds have stopped to either rest or try to pick up a scent, this is called “checking” and it involves not progressing down the field. Every horse but Hondo understood the concept, he wanted to mother effing go this isn’t okay why are we stopped?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!
I want to break here and let it be known that as a fellow competitive spirit, I appreciate my horses desire to beat feet. Nisha, Ransom, Hondo and Dante in his youth, are passionate competitors. I cherish that energy and I do not squash it or even discourage it. I try to foster and manage it. For Hondo, this meant that when the hounds checked and everyone else relaxed, he and I kept moving like sharks in a tank.
Hondo and I went second field for our first Cloudline hunt as I hadn’t really jumped him except over tiny logs back in May when I first adopted him. It had been actual years since I’d jumped anything on purpose. On accident? Sure. Usually from zero to yeeting ourselves over a babbling brook.
This changed on the day of our hunt, but I’ll get to that in a sec. In second field we tried to keep up with first field, but had to part ways as first field headed over jump number one. We had to find a gate. But that’s when the hounds hit (caught a scent) and took off braying. A few members of first field were dealing with a gate issue but the trumpet had sounded in Hondo’s heart. He was being called. Who was he to resist?
We had to go. Now.
Like I said above, you get into more trouble with a horse trying to keep them still. Hondo was ready to run and turn ground to dust. The last thing I would every try to do is bridle that kind of raw power. I instead let him rip. Cantering was our happy place but cantering was just Hondo Lane’s third gear. He had a fourth gear. As it turns out, he also has a fifth.
We were flying. I’d never gone that fast on such a tall horse before (Hondo is 16.1 hands), having galloped my refined Arabian mare and my even smaller Quarter Horse. Galloping on a bigger, taller horse feels bigger and taller, just so you know. Somewhere along what felt like the second furlong, I did ask Hondo to slow down because holy s h i t b a l l s.
We headed over a small hill and dropped down into fourth gear as we approached a tree line. That’s when I spotted a horse without a rider. Not ideal. Hondo didn’t see the problem. The horse without a rider didn’t see a problem, he was keen to keep racing. But the rules of karma being what they are, we had to stop and make sure the fallen rider was okay. Hondo didn’t like this, not one little bit.
The rider was shook up but okay, she just didn’t continue the hunt.
Mr. Hondo, the entire time we had to wait for a truck to get the rider and wait for a few people to go back with the rider, was a fitful, frustrated, immature mess. Imagine getting all the way to Space Mountain and being told you have to get off because someone else got a case of the vomits. Like how does that affect me, though? So someone else got a little woozy, and? The coaster still works let’s FUCKING GO.
We did get going again but didn’t reach that speed again. Clearly though, Hondo had been bitten by the fox hunting bug. He was in it to win it. This was why he lived. To hunt. To gallop. TO DOMINATE THE FIELD.
The hounds hit a few more times that day and Hondo once again pushed it into fourth gear. And because I still hadn’t much jumped him I steered him around jumps.
Okay fine that’s not entirely accurate, I can hear him outside rolling his eyes at me as I type this. Ahem. I *forcibly* dragged him from the small jumps like I was some kind of sadist. He wanted those jumps. Bad. I did allow him to jump toward the end of our hunt over three small coops. He needed those jumps. He savored them. He dominated them. THIS IS LIFE.
A new fox hunting team was born that day. Though Hondo Lane wasn’t much of a race horse on the track, he was more than enough on the hunt field. It was an easy decision to make. I signed us up to be members of the Cloudline Hounds so we could continue doing what we were both designed to do: run wildly and run free.
