Crossing Streams

Folks who live in the wet places on the earth probably never worried much about getting their horse to cross a stream. In Arizona, it's a little more problematic as we seldom have flowing water. Fortunately, right now, we do at the base of the Huachuca Mountains. Although it hasn't rained in months the winter snow melt is "springing" out of the ground in the creek in our main pasture. All my life I never really knew what a spring was until one erupted about 100 feet from my office at the stables. It amazes me that water can travel so far underground and then suddenly appear out of the ground. No wonder we have so many caves out here.

It is obvious the horses are having no trouble running through the water. They have established a fording point which is covered in muddy hoof prints. They could easily jump over the stream but choose to just slosh through it. Hopefully, this fearless fording action will be remembered in September when we compete in the National Cavalry Competition.

Last year we went to the competition in Nebraska which has some flowing streams. One of the events is called the Major Howze event in which teams trot in formation through a 6 - 7 mile course through rough terrain and then attack a series of saber targets meant to simulate an enemy village. The rules required us to have a team of eight riders but we only had six. We asked a couple of guys from the Fort Irwin team to join us since they didn't have eight either.

We were moving at a pretty good clip through some unbelievable terrain when we came up on our first stream crossing. Our horses pretty much went through without incident. However, the Wonder Horse, not wanting to get his hooves wet, jumped over the stream. Unfortunately, there was a low hanging branch at the fording point so I had to quickly duck to avoid getting beaned. What I didn't think of was the pommel shield of my McClellan saddle rising up and slamming me in the gut so hard I had to reach out and reclaim my lunch. After everyone was convinced that I hadn't been killed we turned our focus to a new problem. The Fort Irwin horses had never seen water before. They refused to cross. Since we were in a timed event, this was a problem. Eventually the horses got across but after a few more miles of riding we encountered a second stream crossing. This time all the horses were acting up since the herd assumed there was something wrong with the steam based on the reaction of the Fort Irwin horses. Now we were struggling to get all eight horses across. One of the Irwin horses managed to catapult itself over the stream from a flat stance without touching any water of mud. It was awesome to see. Somehow we got all eight horses across and raced on to our objective.

Despite all our problems with the streams, we managed to keep up a good cross country pace and hit our objective in good time. Each rider had to line up on two targets and take them out in one pass (see photo above). I hit my first target square and felt my saber tip plow into a thick wooden board. The impact shivered my arm from wrist to shoulder but before I could think about it, Wonder Horse had me on the second target and I hit that one in the center too but fortunately missed the board behind it.

Surprisingly, we had the highest kill ratio and best time of the event, winning first place. I admit we practiced the event a couple times during the year but we didn't think of the stream thing. Hopefully, we will be better prepared the next time.