On Aug 30, 6:00?am, Vic Smith wrote:
On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 08:49:39 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:

"Vic Smith" wrote in message
.. .

What's a "horse ranchette?" Sounds a mite kinky.

--Vic

Believe me, I know *all* about horse ranchettes. Usually 5-10 acres of
land, house, barn with the land almost exclusively dedicated to grazing
land.

Heh heh. You've mentioned that (-:
There used to be plenty of riding stables around here, but like
drive-ins, they're becoming hard to find.
My wife would enjoy going horse riding, so I'll probably find a stable
not too far away soon. She thinks horses are "cute." You know.
Last time I went horse riding in Virginia the damn thing bolted for
a couple hundred yards and damn near flattened my balls.
That was, BTW, the *only* time I went horse riding.

--Vic

One of my few horse rides;

When the kids were little, we rented a horse from a guy with a
concession at an ocean beach. It was $20 an hour or something- and we
paid for two hours. The plan was that we would walk down the beach and
the kids could take turns riding on the horse as we went.

Things went well for about the first 30 minutes. The horse walked
along
at a nice slow pace and our kids each spent some time in the saddle.
My wife and I each took a 5-minute turn and then put the kids back on.

At the 30 minute mark, the rent-a-horse just quit. Wouldn't take
another step. No amount of "giddy up", tugging on the harness,
slapping it on the buttocks, etc would move it along. I got up in the
saddle and kicked it lightly in the ribs with my heels. Nothing. The
horse sort of sneezed and whinnied, and then would shake its head and
neck as if to say, "What part of "no" don't you understand?"

We finally managed to get the horse moving again in the one direction
he was willing to go- back down the beach toward the rental tent. In
fact the closer we got to the rental tent the more energy the old nag
seemed to find. We were walking at a fairly fast clip to keep up. When
we got back to the rental tent, the horse came to a second and final
stubborn stop. We were back at the tent in about 55 minutes from the
time we paid for a two hour horseride.

I complained to the wrangler. "Oh, I'm so sorry!" he said. "I gave you
a one-hour horse."

"A one-hour horse?"

"Yup. Folks go out for a ride and have so much fun that they lose
track of time. A lot of people rent a horse for an hour, so we train
the one-hour horses to turn around and head back to the corral after
they have been out for 30 minutes. That way we can be sure to have
horses available when there's a line forming. The horses have a good
sense of time, and after a while they know how far down the beach they
are supposed to go, at different speeds, before they come back. I gave
you a horse that we normally use for one-hour rentals, sorry."

The wrangler told us we could take the same horse out for a second
hour- but as we would simply be covering the same territoy again we
opted for a refund of the second hour's rent.

We city folk get eddycated pretty quickly when we try to match wits
with some of them country fellars....who ever heard of a one-hour
horse? :-)