Latana This is a wonderful sharing. We are so proud of you and your mule ... your are making a real mule rider. Congratulations, Dr. Jim At Rancho Santiago
From: Latana
Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 1:07 PM
To: jagtx@ranchosantiago.com
Subject: Big Adventure
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All I can say is, WHEW. I barely know where to begin, actually!! Lilly of course loaded fine, traveled fine, stood like a dream for tacking up, mounting etc and off the 3 of us gals went...one other mule and a large horse. This trip was up a gorge in the mountain range with the GOAL of hitting the summit and hooking up with the trail down the other side. That never happened! Picture a mountain made of boulders....ones the size of VW Beetles. Picture torrential rains funneling all the surrounding ridge water down this gorge. You know the power of water! What was left was devastation. Solid boulder sluiceway littered with tree trunks 3' and more in diameter, steep banks, you name it. We ended up leading our animals much of the way because we had to traverse these steep banks IF we were lucky to be out of the boulders. Lilly only had one mishap, which was an error of VISION. I was leading her through a skinny boulder space. On my right were some bushes that looked about 2' tall. She opted to swing to my right and go through the bushes, not realizing that they were concealing a large flat rock at an impossible angle. Her feet hit that and down she went, not TUMBLING down, just WHOOMP, down on her stomach with her legs tucked up like she was lying down. She scrambled up, came to me, and was TOTALLY not upset in the LEAST. She did cut herself on the inside of her right ankle, which bled pretty good for a few minutes. Didn't bother her, never was ouchy, fine this morning. Mule tough, as you said. I hated to have that happen to her though, especially on our first outing.
Lessons I learned: 1. Don't ASSUME that Lilly can see everything and will make the right decisions 100% of the time. In the future, I'll make sure to watch where she's putting HER feet, too! 2. We need work at home on "stay", and "stay back". Leading her was OK sometimes, but at other times she wanted to pass me (she married the mare that was in the trailer with us) . I did lots of arm flapping to keep her back. The terrain was just not conducive to much else. Jim, she was/is incredible. Jumping her up onto banks or over logs is so much fun it made me giggle! The horse launched itself over stuff or up onto stuff. Lilly and Jack just sort of FLOATED over and up! No throwing the rider around or anything! Finally after about 3 hours of mostly leading, Jean said even SHE had had enough....the terrain, she said, was the most dangerous and difficult she'd ever encountered. It was so steep in places that I had to let go of Lil and just let her catch up to Jack. She'd just stand there and wait for me...at one point she dragged me behind her with me hanging onto her tail. So then we had the joy of going DOWNHILL through all that. So I've been initiated. It was a ride I wouldn't have wished on Lil and I, but we survived, the equipment caused no problems, and my mule is awesome. The slip and fall could have happened anytime....but let me say that on the way down she didn't make that mistake again!! She ate half my lunch (there was tons of grass up there so she got some good grazing as well), wouldn't drink out of the river puddles, didn't sweat much. At the trailer I sponged her off with Vetrolin and warm water....she appeared to enjoy my labors! This picture shows the very EASIEST part of what we navigated. I'd love to have pictures of the hard stuff, but we were NOT thinking, "photo op"....we were thinking SURVIVAL! Lilly is all you said and more.....MUCH more.Warmest regards, Latana
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