The ultimate endurance ride!

Check this out! A woman, her best mate and her little Arab.......riding from Los Angeles to New Hampshire. (That's pretty much one side of the US to the other, for those who, like me, don't know a lot about US geography!)

http://linnykenney.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html

When I first came across this I couldn't help but think of Forrest Gump.......sorry guys.......you'll have to scroll through the archives to get the whole story, but it's just amazing. If you read right through you will learn that Sojourner, the horse, went through four homes without making a real bond with anyone before coming to Linny. Few people could ride him, and Linny was advised to look for a horse older and more experienced - but to her, the connection meant everything, and she connected with this one! Their story has been featured in Arabian Horse World 5 times, including this one.

This explains it best, from the blog:

On March 1^st, 2010, my friend, Walter, and I set off on an adventure with our Arabian horse, Sojourner. Together the three of us covered 3,700 miles traveling from Los Angles, CA to my childhood home in Bath, NH. I rode Soj and Walter drove our little Toyota Tacoma. 

I say “our” because what was once mine or once his is now ours since the ride poured its magical powers over us and made two platonic friends of 11 years fall in love. This blog tells the entire tale of our nearly 9 month horseback ride and brings us to the now where Sojourner, Walter, our cat, Porter, and I have landed in NH…a new little family with one big focus: LEATHER CREATIONS (and maybe a few others)....like planning a wedding!!!!

They never cease to amaze me!

Horses are such tough creatures. They can survive situations that just leave us shaking our heads sometimes, wondering how on earth they could possibly have made it through!

Take Eddie the Arab for example........read his full story here.....who survived a harrowing trip through an irrigation tunnel - over 5km in length! His 16 year old rider was riding along the riverbank when Eddie slipped and fell in. The poor rider just had to let go, and watch poor Eddie sucked under the water and swept away. I can only imagine how terrified both of them were feeling at that moment.

The tunnel is a horseshoe-shaped concrete waterway, which carries 740 cubic feet per second. That's a LOT of water, moving in a big hurry. Eddie would have been in about 2.5m of water, with only about 60cm of head room to breathe. Whta's even scarier, is that to actually get into the tunnel, he would have had to go through a water control gate, which meant he would have been about 1.5m underwater, facing backwards - and remained submerged for about 30m or so!

He remained there for 2 days until he was found by a worker in water to his belly. Amazingly, he only had grazes and cuts to show for his ordeal. He did spike a fever and was given fluids and antibiotics, and has now recovered well.

Read on in the article to the last couple of paragraphs - Eddie sure is one good rescuer!

Just a quick one.....

I promise I'll be back writing proper posts soon.....moving away to a new town, starting a new job and sending my eldest off to "big school" has kinda taken up all my time lately!

Just thought I'd mention this: Equine Emergency Rescue, particularly in light of my recent flood post, and with all the terrible, terrible things going on around Australia at the moment. Floods, fires, cyclone - and it's only just February!

It's important for horse owners to have some idea of how to rescue their beloved animals if things do go wrong. Having been in a float accident, let me tell you it is a horrifying, frightening experience. We all know horses are flight animals, and will panic if things go wrong. Even the calmest of horses can lose control in a tough situation - and let's face it, most of the time anyone coming to your rescue is probably not going to understand an awful lot about handling horses, let alone panicked, stressed ones!

The book is written in such a way that it's easy to show someone how to help your horse out of danger. Definitely worth the money - and if you get an electronic copy (like I did), you can print it and keep a copy in the car, stbales, float, truck, everywhere! Well worth the small cost in my opinion.