A friend and I purchased an in-foal broodmare as partners this year and plan to sell the foal and rebreed the mare. Lucky is her name, and she is due in March. Although we don’t ride her, we try to keep her exercised regularly. A few weeks back I decided to pony Lucky, as she needed to get out of the pasture to really stretch her legs and enjoy some and different scenery.
Over the six months that Lucky has been with us she bonded with my trail riding mare Dollie and walks nicely beside her as I ride. I have ponied Lucky twice before this ride and everything went well. Lucky is a big black mare – taller than Dollie – sweet with a quiet temperament. Nothing bothers her. Before coming to live with us, she was a trail horse at Yosemite National Park, a been there, done that kind of mare.
We headed out the back gate and stayed on the wide trails near the ranch. About 45 minutes into the ride I decided to cross the two-lane blacktop road and head into the hills. I felt the horses had sufficiently worked off any freshness. Plus, I had longed Dollie before heading out and it was getting close to 85 degrees now. That kind of heat alone usually knocks the horses down a notch or two.
Fortunately, the blacktop road does not see much traffic, especially mid-morning, so crossing was easy. No cars in either direction when we started across. I decided to ride in the wash along the road as the sand is deeper and makes the horses work a bit harder. We trotted around the sage brush, under some low hanging tree limbs and headed for the culvert where the wash ends and we head straight up the hill toward the old, abandoned gold mine.
We were three happy girls. I’m sure if horses could smile their smiles would have been as wide as mine. We had just climbed out of the wash and were on the trail up the hill, when without warning both mares bolted. It happened so fast that I didn’t know what had happened. My mare was in a gear I had never felt before trying to keep up with the big black mare. Neither mare was listening to whoa and Dollie was ignoring the bit completely.
Finally, I dropped the lead rope to Lucky so I could pull Dollie’s head around and stop her. Lucky was halfway up the mountain before she stopped and turned around. She was looking at something. I turned to see what it was. There were six bicyclists riding on the blacktop road, three wide in two rows. A pack of bicyclists in the most colorful biking gear riding. Apparently, this is not a sight seen on the trails of the national park!
Talking to both mares to keep them clam I headed up the hill to catch Lucky, but she wasn’t done running. Even though her friend Dollie was headed toward her, Lucky ran down into the valley and out of sight. This made Dollie freak out to the point of uncontrollability. I decided the best course of action was to dismount and lead Dollie up the hill for a better vantage point to see where Lucky had gone. I thought Lucky was probably a little below us eating some weeds, and that once Dollie saw her friend, she would calm down enough for me to remount and ride down to get Lucky.
As I climbed the hill, I could not see the big black mare. I did however notice a pickup truck pulled over at the side of the road below. I thought the mare must be in the wash. Then my eyes moved up the embankment across the road and I saw a cloud of dust and a black horse running back up the path we had come down to cross the road. The truck driver must have seen her about to cross the road and pulled over. I was relieved Lucky had made it safely across and was hopeful she was tracing our path back to the barn.
I was concerned though because if she missed the turn onto our dirt road she was headed straight for the freeway and barbed wire. I prayed she didn’t get that far. I started making phone calls to neighbors who could help. No one picked up. I texted my son to go check the back gate and see if the mare was there.
By this time Dollie had calmed down enough for me to ride home. Maybe she had seen the mare heading toward home too, or she realized she needed to trust me again. Either way, the ride home was a good one except for the what ifs going through my head – what if Lucky is not at the back gate, what if she made it to the freeway…
When I got to the back gate of the property, I could see a black horse in a stall down the hill. I checked my phone and my son had texted me that she was home. Through my stress, I hadn’t felt my phone vibrate. Happy to see Lucky home I tied Dollie up so I could check the pregnant mare. She was fine but for one dime sized cut on her front fetlock. I imagine she caught the lead rope at least once and went down and scraped it. The rope was split so it was a good deduction. Relieved she made it home safely, almost completely unscathed, I realized she truly is a lucky, Lucky horse.
