{"id":2529,"date":"1998-09-01T12:46:56","date_gmt":"1998-09-01T12:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/troutsfarm.com\/latest\/?p=2529"},"modified":"2016-07-08T07:35:56","modified_gmt":"2016-07-08T11:35:56","slug":"on-the-equitours-circuit-at-mountain-equestrian-trails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/on-the-equitours-circuit-at-mountain-equestrian-trails\/","title":{"rendered":"On The Equitours Circuit At Montain Equestrian Trails"},"content":{"rendered":"

EQUIS<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0Equis wasn’t always a lady but she got the job done.\u00a0 She was Bob’s number one guide horse in Belize.\u00a0 She carried lunch, ropes, cave lamps, a first aid kit and Bob through the jungle.\u00a0 She didn’t weigh 1,000 pounds and was under 15 hands in height.\u00a0 During one of our first weeks in Belize, Bob went out into the overgrown pasture to round up the horses.\u00a0 This was before we began feeding them and so taught them to be waiting in the corral in the mornings.\u00a0 This particular morning, Bob was little concerned with snakes and wasn’t too keen on the size of the brush he was wading through.\u00a0 One horse spotted him and came up to investigate.\u00a0 Impressed with her outgoing nature, Bob slipped a macate around her neck and jumped on her to go find the others.\u00a0 Together, they rounded up the rest and from that day on, Equis became Bob’s special horse.\u00a0 She bucked every time Peter got on her back but behaved herself reasonably well for Bob.<\/span><\/p>\n

CALYPSO<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a terrible photo of Calypso but is the only one we have.\u00a0 Calypso became Camille’s saddle horse shortly after we arrived in Belize because he was only four and already had a history.\u00a0 He reminded us of Jesse even though he wasn’t\u00a0 always a gentleman with others.\u00a0 He kicked Humberto and Aaron and bucked both Sam and Bob but never misbehaved with Camille.\u00a0 We never figured out why.<\/span><\/p>\n

We had to sell Calypso because he was making a nuisance of himself by breaking down fences and mounting the mares.\u00a0 He had been gelded but didn’t know it.\u00a0 Although he never bucked with Camille in the saddle, he was too risky for the dude string.\u00a0 We couldn’t afford to keep a personal saddle horse and since he had good breeding and was only 4 years old, we sold him.\u00a0 We were able to get $300 Belize Dollars (or $150 US dollars) for him which is top dollar for a horse in Belize.<\/span><\/p>\n

ANGELA<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Angela was Bob’s other guide horse.\u00a0 She was only four and very sweet-natured.\u00a0 The wranglers called her “Nalgas”\u00a0 because she had a big behind.\u00a0 She was quarter horse bred and had the characteristically “apple-bottomed” hindquarters.\u00a0 She got very sick (we think she foundered) and the ranch owners ended up giving her away.\u00a0 Pure-bred horses don’t do well in the harsh environment of Belize.<\/span><\/p>\n

MARLEY AND SPOCK<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Marley worked harder for men than she did for women so we scheduled her accordingly.\u00a0 If she lagged at all for Bob, all he had to do was pick up a twig and then she moved SOOO nice.\u00a0 She reminded us us Jesse, the Wonder Horse.\u00a0 Big, pretty, strong and lazy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Spock frightened tourists with the sounds his stomach continually emitted.\u00a0 They thought there were tigers (Belizean for jaguar) in the bush!\u00a0 He bit Camille so hard on the wrist (it was her fault) that the wound oozed for days.\u00a0 This prompted us to get all of the horses vaccinated for rabies which was a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has been let out of the barn.\u00a0 Nevertheless, Spock was reliable in many other ways and more than earned his keep.<\/span><\/p>\n

NIKKI<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Nikki became Camille’s favorite after she had to ride her back to the lodge from up in the Pine Ridge one afternoon.\u00a0 The tourist who had ridden Nikki up there was unable to finish the ride, so Rolando drove Camille up in the Trooper and she and the tourist traded seats.\u00a0 It was such a wonderful ride home on Nikki that Camille decided to use her as her guide horse from then on.\u00a0 She responded to my slightest inclination even after years of packing heavy riders over rough terrain.<\/span><\/p>\n

WRECKS<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Wrecks was Peter’s guide horse until he nearly killed him with one of his notoriously fierce gallops.\u00a0 Peter knew two gaits: walk and run.\u00a0 The tourists loved it even though none of them would treat their horses at home that way.\u00a0 Peter would gallop the group for at least a mile and then stop and tie all the horses to trees while the tourists went for a swim.\u00a0 One afternoon, we drove to Big Rock Falls with lunch and found Rex standing tied to a tree, drenched in sweat and panting.\u00a0 Camille hiked down to the falls and asked Peter to come up and walk his horse while Bob unsaddled Rex and started walking him.<\/span><\/p>\n

SOMBRA<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Little Sombra.\u00a0 She didn’t weigh much more than 800 pounds.\u00a0 She was a beautiful little horse.\u00a0 Sombra means shade in Spanish.\u00a0 You can see the notch in her left ear where a machete caught her.\u00a0 We called the vet but he didn’t come until a week later.\u00a0 By then, we had done what we could do with penicillin and larvacide.\u00a0 Sombra was a nervous animal, but quick and big-hearted.\u00a0 We decided not to let any of the tourists ride her and then made the mistake of giving her to Peter as a guide horse.\u00a0 Peter was hard on his horses.\u00a0 He only rode two gaits – walk and run.\u00a0 Poor little Sombra.<\/span><\/p>\n

THE LITTLE ONES<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Within a month of our arrival at MET, two new horses hit the ground, bringing the herd up to 22.\u00a0 We wouldn’t have believed it possible that two mares in that skinny herd we inherited\u00a0 were carrying foals.\u00a0 We named Mariposa, the yellow filly after a butterfly and Sol, the bay colt\u00a0 Sol after his star, which was a big as the sun.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

We later learned that Calypso may have been the father of either or both foals as he was gelded as a four-year-old.\u00a0 The stars on foals are always large in comparison to their little heads because, while their head grows, their star remains the same size.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

We kept the mares in the orchard and fed them three times a day until they had foaled and their foals were weaned.\u00a0 We sold both foals rather than feed them for 5 or 6 years in the hopes of adding them to the dude string.\u00a0 Sol was sweet and Mariposa was not.<\/span><\/p>\n

A New Life in Belize<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EQUIS<\/p>\n

\n

Equis wasn’t always a lady but she got the job done. She was Bob’s number one guide horse in Belize. She carried lunch, ropes, cave lamps, a first aid kit and Bob through the jungle. She didn’t weigh 1,000 pounds and was under 15 hands in height. During one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2537,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2529"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10043,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions\/10043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/troutsfarmtoo.com\/latest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}