Baby's New Boots

Silent Velcro. That is what the horse world is waiting for, according to Joya.

Now that we are trailering up to Tigoni on a semi-regular basis, and we've got some out-of-town horse shows on the horizon, I have bought Joya a beautiful set of green shipping wraps. Her old set were too big and would flop down around her legs like baggy bad-boy jeans. She didn't like the look, she didn't like the feel.

The new ones fit great, and are stiff enough to sort of stand up all by themselves, which eliminates that unsightly wrinkle around the hocks. Why do they fit so well? YARDS of Velcro divided into lots and lots of strips.

Opening them. Putting them on. Taking them off. By the time you're done, you've subjected your horse to that horrible ripping-the-skin-off-the-cat Velcro sound effect a few dozen times. The first time we suited Joya up in her new gear, she looked down with a sort of horrified fascination, trembling lightly all over. When we took them off, the look changed to one of barely concealed terror. Maybe she thought we were waxing her legs?

That said, she bravely held her ground, and wore her new boots with pride the next day when we rode out to Tigoni.

With all the fuss over Joya's boots, we were slow to realize that Beauty, who is a bit of an old lady in the trailer, leaning into every little turn, had rubbed a bare spot on her tail from sort of leaning back and sitting on the chain when we were driving the curvy bits.

Fortunately, Gabe in Tigoni found an old polo wrap and a bit of tie, and he sprayed the raw spot with blue stuff then packaged her tail quite neatly for the ride home. Now we have dug out some old tail wraps from under the rest of the oddments in the tack basket and are having them repaired.

Things Fall Apart....

With a show just two weeks away, I've been trying to do some jumping schools in our home boma. But it's not easy -- even setting up three jumps has become a challenge. First of all, the lovely plastic barrels I like to use for building an oxer have been requisitioned to hold water. We have a drought here in Kenya and water is strictly rationed, so on the days the water is on we need to fill the barrels to have enough for the horses on dry days.

Second, the termites! Sometimes I think if you could put Kenya on a scale and weigh it, then subtract the weight of the bugs, you'd find the country is about 50 percent soil and rock, 50 percent bug.

Third, my clumsy mare! Because of the termites, I bought PVC pipes to use for jumps and trotting poles about a year ago. They were too light, so we put some sand inside and capped the ends, and they have worked well. Unfortunately, I've discovered that with time, the pipes become brittle. Joya destroyed three of them in a single schooling session trotting and cantering over -- and sometimes on -- ground poles.

Because of the way they shatter, I have decided they aren't safe to use anymore...too many jagged edges.

Satellite TV Karma!

OK, so I walked into the TV room in our house in Nairobi, turned it on...and what comes up? World-class show-jumping! The Global Champions Tour, VDL Group Grand Prix. Gorgeous Euro-horses jumping enormous obstacles in fabulous style.

Now, given that even here in Kenya we get about a hundred channels on our satellite service, and given that only a minuscule percentage of the airtime on any one of them is devoted to that ratings killer of all time, equestrian sports, I found that extremely unlikely.

So I sat and watched the final 40 minutes or so. Which is also extremely unlikely, as my television attention span has shrunk to the point I need a microscope to find it. And I was riveted. Here's why...(are you listening, Jane?) After a heart-stopping jump-off, third place finisher (just .5 sec off the winning round) was a 60-year-old frenchman, Michel Robert, who I gather is sort of the George Morris of France.

Yes, 60. Almost 61, as the announcer pointed out. Sure, in the horse sports we older athletes have an undeniable advantage...in that our equine partner can be as young as we like. And let's not forget who is actually jumping those heart-stopping oxers and spooky liverpools. Still, that doesn't mean that you can ride at the top levels without being a pretty fine athlete.

And just to make it perfect, the first and second place finishers were women. And at least one of them, I think both, were riding mares.

Party Bus or Mom's Taxi Service?

Now that Jane and I are all hyped up about Tigoni -- we're going again tomorrow -- I'm obsessing a bit about how nerve-wracking it is getting a horse from point A to point B (especially when you've got Banana and Little Banana in between, two little towns with a universe-worth of chaos and approx. 79 speed bumps between them).

It doesn't help that Joya and I have very different opinions on the best way for her to travel.

Joya just loves a lorry. For her, I think it's like riding the team bus to an away game in high school. Five other horses! Some of them sure to be geldings! Endless snacking! Opportunities for flirting and feuding!

I, on the other hand, hate a lorry. I look at them all loaded in there with their heads sticking out the side, and my imagination runs wild. I see the lorry careening around a corner, out of control, much to close to a telephone pole... Plus, who is this guy driving the thing? Does he know where he is going? Does he fully appreciate the nature of the load, which is to say heavy, living, a tad neurotic and in all honesty not that smart?

So, I like my friend's two-horse trailer. I know the driver, 'cause the driver is me. I know where I am going. And I know -- I really know -- that everyone else out there on the road is crazy.

Joya thinks trailers are for nerds and wimps. It's like having Mom drive you to the prom. She used to load quietly enough, but then got a bit shirty about it after I took her to Gilgil all by herself, and then brought her back again with a jump in the other half. It was a jump she never much liked anyway.

So, before our first trip to Tigoni last week, Peter and I practiced loading Joya and Beauty into the trailer. First try, total failure. But by the fifth time, it all went pretty quietly, as long was Beauty went first...

"I'll follow you anywhere!"

Morning Tea in Tigoni

We finally did it!

About a year ago, I set out to learn to haul a trailer. A riding buddy offered to let us use his trailer as needed, so I had a hitch and an electrical connection put on my Toyota Prado, and I took a few trips up and down the road, then a bit further afield to taste traffic, and we were good to go.

The main motivation was so that Jane and I could take our horses to Tigoni to ride. It didn't take me long to learn how to drive with a trailer behind (just don't watch me back up). Since then, I've gotten sucked into the whole horse show racket, so it's been a useful skill. But that dream of ours -- riding our own beloved horses in our most favorite corner of Kenya -- was elusive.

But, as I keep telling myself, this is my year to do it all -- cram in as much Kenya and as much horse as I can. So on Friday, our scyce Peter and I took the horses next door for a refresher course in loading. That went about as well as could be expected, though no actual injuries resulted, and at 8:30 Saturday morning we set off.

Tigoni is only about 20 minutes by car from our end of Nairobi. To get there, you go through Little Banana and Banana proper, past the Kentmere Club and up to the top of a ridge. You come down the ridge and turn a corner and...breathtakingly....you are presented with a green landscape of acacias, huge fig trees, and tea. It screams AFRICA.

We had permission to park the trailer at a beautiful farm next door to where Jane and her family rented a house for years. We unloaded, Peter tacked the horses up, and then Jane and I set off for two-plus hours of riding on red soil paths through tea, trees, and maize.

We stopped first for a photo op in front of some over-the-top flame trees in exuberant bloom. Joya thought they might be good to eat so she backed me right into the branches.

Still feeling like that 29-year-old endurance rider is breathing down our necks, we did a lot of trot work. The girls bravely confronted such terrors as cattle eating rustly corn stalks in a frighteningly noisy fashion, donkeys giving them that scary "we are more alike than you want to admit" look, and children kicking around a soccer ball made of brightly colored plastic bags wound up tight and tied with twine.

Back in the trailer, Joya (who is not entirely sure about trailers) looked for some reassurance from Beauty, who is definitely the big sister in the relationship, and Jane and I spent the whole drive back asking ourselves why we had waited so long, and planning to come back every chance we get.

FEI Challenge comes back to haunt me...

I have discovered a little-understood downside to having one's dressage teacher participate in a clinic taught by a hot-shot international FEI judge from Sweden. That is that said teacher comes to class the next day ON FIRE with new ideas.

J. and I came into the arena yesterday and ran headlong into A's steely new determination to get J. round and on the bit. Five thousand half-halts later, I think we actually semi-achieved this goal for a good four strides. And it was a lovely 10 seconds. But will we ever be able to stretch that 10 seconds out to last for an entire test?

(Photo above is NOT my horse. My horse only dreams of looking so cool.)

Nothing really wrong with all this, except for the screaming in my shoulder muscles and the equally painful reminder that I know nothing. It seems that my horse and I achieve the most fundamental goals of the dressage discipline approximately .001 percent of the time.

Ah well, pole pole (slowly slowly), as we say in Kenya