Rednecks With Guns

Last Saturday evening I went for an off-property ride with that young teenage gal (I actually feel sorry for her...broken home, on the chubby side, the "popular girls" at the barn ignore her, and she's always getting in fights at school), she hasn't been on a ride off the property on her new mare...EVER! The mare's an older QH, bombproof & quiet. We decided to go visit a neighbor's who have nice trails cut through their woods. They occasionally board at the barn & have more than once invited anyone who wanted to c'mon over and ride their trails.

The trails are awesome, with plenty of VERY steep hills, deep woods, fun to ride (Man from Snowy River anyone?). Quzqo was a jumpy nervous idjit to begin with, the mare did okay considering she'd never been there before. We were about halfway around the property when we started to hear some guy YELLING very loudly and very angrily! Shit...were we trespassing after all??? The yelling continued, punctuated with sounds like hammering. We couldn't understand WHAT the guy was saying, or what was going on...it was coming from the direction of the people's house, up the hill from us.

We went on a bit further, and suddenly the girl nervously proclaims "SUE! I saw a man with a GUN!!!!"

Huh...well, no law against that (yet). "Seriously.. .I saw a man back there walking through the woods with a GUN!!!" By that time we were up a hill, so I figured if somebody's playing with guns back down in a valley, we're out of range.

The yelling and hammering continued... by this time the horses have picked up our nervousness (yep, I got tense...some Deliverance reject slouching around in the woods with a gun? No thanks!), and both attempted (more than once) to spin and go back (horses just ain't got no
sense...we were heading AWAY from danger, not TOWARDS it, silly horses!). I wanted to avoid the house just in case the yelling WAS for us, but the only trail out would go right by the property.

To add to the fun, this was a main trail to the property, where they stored...stuff. I saw a snowblower attachment for a tractor, a stack of lumber, some other building materials... all horrifying to the equine eye! Poor Quzqo, I could feel his heart pounding, even through the saddle fenders!!! He'd take one step forward, five steps backwards, try to spin, only to find the mare in his way, I'd get him pointed back the right way, one step forward, five steps backwards... . We paused, and I just let him LOOK at the snowblower.. .eventually I was able to edge him past all the scary stuff, and by that time we were to the dirt road driveway.

That's when I saw about 8 teenagers in the side yard of the house, with their paintball guns, thankfully they were regrouping and not out running around in the woods...GAD, can you imagine the chaos THAT would have been, especially if a stray paintball hit us or the horses!!

We got the hell out of there and back to the main road, and had a grand time cantering up and down, LOL...Quzqo beat the QH in a race to a mailbox, snark! Which doesn't say much for the mare if she can be beaten by Quzqo!!