Western Horse Adventures

By Josie Rusho

Western Trail Adventures has over 50 trail stories that include severe weather situations, wild animals, unpredictable circumstances, out of control animals and people, dude ranch mayhem, a girl's journey to find a new home, and broken parts and foolish ideas.

The first section, titled “Raw Power of the Elements,” is divided into chapters labeled earth, wind, fire, water, ice, snow, and fog.

In “Earth” are three stories of horses and riders and their struggles against the elements. The three “Wind” stories are about riders faced with falling trees in the northwest. The “Fire” stories include a campfire that was not properly put out and two friends on their horses that save the forest from burning. The first of four “Water” stories is of two daredevil riders that make a terrible choice to cross a river, almost drowning a horse. The second is lighthearted tale about a willful horse and a rider that ends up in a ice cold creek. The third tale is about a serious mistake by a rider that chooses to cross a swollen river on his mule, his pack animal gets swept away. The fourth story is about the deadly flash floods of the desert, the trail riders get stuck in the middle of a flood and live to tell about it.

The second section of the book is about “Wild Animals” and includes encounters on horseback with a mountain lion, there are ten rattlesnake stories one of which is about a trail dog that gets bitten, there are five stories of bear encounters while on horseback, a tale of a wasp nest and how a rider gets a face full of wasps, and a heartwarming tale of two baby domestic animals left in the wild and how they get rescued.

The “Unpredictable Circumstances” stories include; two wire stories where horses get tripped by hidden fencing wire, the bite and sprain story is about a trail rider on a camping trip in Oregon and has nothing but bad luck. The next story is of a young horse that is being ridden on a railroad track to avoid an attack by nesting geese, but a train is coming and the rider needs to make a tough decision to dismount at a full gallop onto a tree. Another story is of a horse and rider that are a long way from help and the horse gets sick on the trail. One story is about a pony that catches sleeping sickness and dies. The final tale is of a mule, she has very strange behavior towards other animals.

The “Naughty people” stories are of a flasher that stocks a female horseback rider across the desert for miles. The next story is about a strange encounter that two trail riders are faced with, an angry ranger on a state trail makes trouble for the women.

The “Mexican hat ranch” story is a five part account of a dude ranch that two young sisters work at. The two girls get their first job at the ranch, they meet the mean ex-con that works as a wrangler, one girl buy a foal to raise, they attend a wild party, and lastly a rape takes place at the ranch.

“The armed and dangerous” chapter is about a girl on her own that is camping with her horse and dogs in the deep woods. A man who threatens her and her dogs gets in her way, she is a force to be reckoned with because she is armed.

“Broken parts and foolish ideas” are stories about broken horse tack and one tale is about a drunken rider. Another story is about a cowgirl that has gone riding by herself in the high desert. She discovers her truck has no brakes and she is headed down a steep grade to a major highway. It is a tale of fear and power.

“The journey home” is a 10-part story of a girl traveling over four states to find a new home. She has all she owns in the back of her truck and her horse is in the trailer. She is faced with cutting her leg to the bone, a mechanical problem, meeting nice and not-so-nice strangers, re-connecting with old friends, camping in the wilderness alone, and encounters with wild animals. Finally, she finds a new home where she feels comfortable and happy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josie Rusho
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311171184

Josie Rusho

Josie Rusho has vast experience with horses and has ridden many miles of trails in the wilderness, mountains, deserts, and plains of the western United States. She has written five other books. They are all trail guide books for the horse enthusiast. They include information on Washington and Oregon trails. She makes her home in Washington State with her husband and son. Josie is originally from Colorado. She has always loved to travel the United States with her horse. Josie has found that life experiences will find you, and then will guide you to the places you need to go. She believes that the best thing that you can do for yourself is to get out of your own way, and to let the love, fun, sorrow, laughter, and tears begin. She hopes you find the book as much fun to read as it was to put together.

Book preview

Introduction

Western Horse Adventures is a book that is based on true stories. Some of the details have been changed to protect the identity of the people involved.

There are morals to some of the stories, and prudent information tucked into the tales. Presented are horse enthusiasts’ life changing events that were lived through, and then retold.

Sit back and read some stranger-than-fiction tales.

About the Author

Josie Rusho has vast experience with horses and has ridden many miles of trails in the wildernesses, mountains, deserts, and plains of the western United States.

She has written five other books. They are all trail guide books for the horse enthusiast. They include information on Washington and Oregon trails.

She makes her home in Washington State with her husband and son. Josie is originally from Colorado. She has always loved to travel the western United States with her horse.

Josie has found that life experiences will find you, and then will guide you to the places you need to go. She believes that the best thing that you can do for yourself is to get out of your own way, and to let the love, fun, sorrow, laughter, and tears begin.

She hopes you find the book as much fun to read as it was to put together.

Section 1: Raw Power of the Elements

~ Earth ~

Mary and Tom’s Flip-Flop

Mary joined a local endurance riding club in Las Vegas, Nevada. She wanted to ride her buckskin gelding Tom, but he was still too young for the races, so she pit-crewed for several riders and was a helper for the veterinarians for a year or so.

She needed to wait until Tom turned four to ride in a 25 mile race. The horses aren’t allowed to race until age four to allow time for their knees to close, which is a term that means the horses’ legs are fully grown. It is for the safety of the horse.

The rules read that a team of one horse and one rider has a maximum of six hours to complete a 25 mile ride. She rode six rides with Tom as a four year old. When Tom turned five, she was eligible to enter the fifty mile races where the completion times become twelve hours or less.

The riding season in the desert for endurance races is October until May, when it is less hot.

Tom was raised by Mary and she had bottle-fed him as a foal. She trained him and although he certainly was not the breed most people would even consider using for the long hard races, the sport was open to all breeds. Tom was a grade (mixed breeding) with some Quarter Horse blood and Mary found he had extra gaits. He could rack as well as single-foot, and moved quite nicely.

She had several endurance rides under her belt, but was still considered a novice at her new-found pastime.

Mary was told by the veterans of the sport to have food waiting for herself and her animal at the 25 mile mark. She always came to the rides alone, and would depend on the kindness of the veterinarians and other pit crews to help her get a flake of hay and a sack lunch to the mid-race pit stop, where water was provided. The half-way point of the race is where there is a mandatory 30-minute hold.

This particular ride was a May ride—the desert was in bloom and it was beautiful.

The race began just before dawn. Mary had found through time that her gelding was not a very excitable horse and that she could start the race with the front runners. A blank was shot from a starting gun and they were off. She needed to be careful not to let Tom lope more than a mile before settling him into his steady extended trot. If she let him out he would burn too much energy and would fade later on in the race. It would be a long enough day as it was without having to push him when he became tired toward the end of the race. The other riders would giggle at Mary and Tom as they raced ahead on their fast moving graceful Arabians, and sometimes they would make rude comments. Mostly these people were hot shots from California, not the locals from Vegas. In her mind, Mary excused their behavior, as she knew they were racing for the big national points and were used to being competitive. The other riders had no way of knowing she and Tom were certainly not in competition with them. Oh well, she would not be disgruntled. Each to their own, and she was having fun with the sport.

The admirable motto of endurance riding is To finish is to win. There is not much water in the desert so when you can ride fifty miles, and have water waiting every fifteen miles or so, life is good. The bonus is that a veterinarian will look at your horse before, during, and after the race and rate his performance.

At the ten-mile point, one-third of the riders had overtaken Mary since Tom had straggled behind a bit. Mary coat-tailed (letting the other horse’s energy pull your horse along with invisible power) one nice local gal on a paint horse for a couple miles. The gal let out a bark Hole on the right! Her horse stumbled into the soft dirt, almost dislodging her, but both recovered nicely. Mary veered to the left, as quick as she could. Instantly the ground collapsed all around Mary and Tom. Not just a hole, but the entire ground in at least a ten-foot radius, dropped about six inches or so. The earth collapsed like a soufflé in a chef’s nightmare. Mary remembers seeing the other rider looking back as she screamed. Next, she saw Tom’s head and neck fold under himself, as they both were flung forward and down to the ground. Luckily she was clear of his big tawny body as he sprawled across the desert with a big thud. They both did a complete somersault.

However, as awful as it must have looked, the springy dirt showed mercy and they were both spared any permanent scars. Mary got up and Tom did too. Mary’s mouth was filled with sand. She spit it out and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Horse and rider both shook the incident off. Mary jumped back on Tom and they resumed the race.

The gal in front of them on the paint was the only rider to stop. The rest just gave a wide berth to the whole situation.

Mary made it five miles more to the first pit-stop before her left ankle started complaining. The delay of pain was probably due to an adrenalin rush. She had, in fact, sprained her ankle and it began swelling. The next 38 miles were hell for Mary, but she was determined to finish what she had started. After all, no rule said the rider had to be sound as they rode over the finish line, just the horse. Mary did finish the race, though she could hardly put her tippy- toe in the stirrup the last twenty miles of the ride. Posting was excruciatingly painful. After the race, she was given her completion award at the after-ride banquet.

She started to form a plan on how she was going to drive home with one leg and a manual transmission. As a kid, she had seen her brother show off by shifting without pushing the clutch down. She would need to give it a go. Mary was able to learn to drive without the clutch in a hurry, considering she had thirty miles to go to get to the stable where she boarded her horse. She managed to do it with a bit of grinding and lurching as she revved the motor, relying on brain-cell memory as to when exactly the engine sounded right to change gears. Tom was too tired to even care if he was being tossed around a bit in the trailer while she learned to drive one-legged. That day Mary had true grit for sure.

She and Tom went on to complete one thousand racing miles in the next three years. She was awarded a cool keepsake medallion.

Three people from the club wanted to buy Tom after she retired him from racing, but he was a definite keeper. Tom had a calm wonderful nature. Mary did not sell him.

Rune in a Hole

Near Naches, Washington the most bizarre event Marie and Moe could imagine was about to happen in the Umtanum Canyon. Marie and Moe, (first cousins) went trail riding one day. Marie was on her chestnut mare Rune, and Moe was on his gelding, Frack. They were exploring a ravine that was a finger-link canyon that feeds into the Yakima Canyon and Yakima River Basin. The route was not a real trail, just a game trail made by deer and possibly elk. It had intrigued Marie for a long time.

They had parked a few miles up the hill from the beginning of the canyon on a dirt road. The road was too steep to bring the trailers into the mouth of the little canyon. The two rode south on the dirt road for a couple of miles on a level plateau, to where the small road narrows and drops off suddenly into a treeless, deep canyon.

Moe, as usual, liked to push the envelope and took off from the nice, more gradual slope of the road and made his horse slide all the way down to the bottom of the canyon on his haunches. Moe was the thrill seeker of the family. He was always the one to take an unnecessary risk. Marie was used to Moe and his antics, so she was not impressed at all. In fact she was tiring of his dangerous behavior.

Marie took a little more time, and rode to the bottom of the canyon by way of the little road. Marie thought her mare, Rune, even held some dislike for Moe and his horse. Rune often pinned her ears flat toward the little draft horse Moe rode. The two riders joined at the bottom of the road a few minutes later. Moe was rolling his eyes in an invalidating way and drumming his fingers on his saddle, as if to imply the wait had been unbearable. Marie paid her cousin no mind.

The road has a spot where a small creek flows over it and then continues uphill toward Naches. This is where a little path veers away from the road in a draw, headed east, downhill to the Yakima River. The other end of the trail is a popular fishing and hiking spot and this was the intended destination for the day, to go down to the river about six miles on the path and back again. The path starts as a two track grassy road, then in a half mile it tuns into a whisper of a trail and continues on down. That is all the information they knew about this ride.

The two riders have been riding together for over ten years and knew each other well since birth. Their mothers were sisters. Moe wanted to take the lead, and he let his little horse wind around the sticker bushes and duck into the brush. They crossed the small creek at least five times. Marie and Rune followed. Rune’s skin was sensitive and she flinched at the thorns, so when the trail widened out a bit, it was a great relief. The riders knew the little creek was on the left of the trail now. They rode along a beautiful green grassy area that was at least twenty feet or so from the creek. In fact they couldn’t see the creek, it was so brushy by its banks, but they could hear its flow.

Moe and Frack were happily traveling along, and all was going well. The two riders were having fun investigating the pathway.

All of a sudden Marie felt a big drop, and the ground was abruptly at her feet! Rune was quickly buried up to her neck in the dirt! She was in some type of hole where the ground had given out straight under her. Marie felt the dirt pushing her stirrups upward and managed to get herself off of the mare by instinctively curling her legs up and rolling sideways onto the grass, but Rune could not move. She was absolutely stuck. It looked like a sick prank had been played on her with a vacuum sucking her down like quick sand, but in dry dirt. Rune struggled, but could hardly move as she was so tightly packed in the hole. The only thing that was visible on the mare was her head, neck, and the top-line of her body. Marie let out a yelp. Moe turned his head and could not believe the information his eyes were relaying to his brain. Rune was down in the ground and Marie was sitting on the grass. How did that happen in just a blink of an eye? The two riders quickly got Frack tied up and went to Rune. The mare had the most peculiar look in her eyes, as if to say, What the hell! Get me out! Marie and Moe waited for a bit to see if the horse could free herself, but to no avail. The mare was smart and only struggled for a short time. This did help to loosen the ground around her body and saddle, though. The one thing that most concerned Marie was if Rune was hurt in any way. What might be under her horse? Marie wanted to panic, but the mare was not acting like she was hurting at all so she calmed down. Moe and Marie were racking their brains, thinking of ways to free the horse, but they had limited equipment with them.

They had no ropes or straps big or long enough to wrap around the mare. Even if they did, how would they even get it around her, or what good would it do? They could not hoist her up into the heavens, and pulling her sideways would not do anything. Rune had rested after the initial struggle, and was oddly calm. Marie had released the reins from the bit in her mouth, and in their place put a lead rope on her halter-headstall combination. Marie was glad that the reins were not around or under her mare as that could have caused the mare confusion if the bit tugged at her mouth. The riders were thinking they would need to have Moe ride out to get some help and Marie would stay by her mare’s side until help could arrive.

That is when Rune made a bold move. She had a plan of her own. All at once she awoke every cell in her body in order to escape this grave. She blasted herself straight up and out of the hole! It was like seeing a rocket being launched—truly amazing. Rune gave a gentle nicker to Marie and the mare moved with great caution towards her, watching her own feet and the ground.

Marie handed the lead rope to Moe and walked over to the hole to see what was down there. She was shocked to see a big cavern. Down in the very bottom of the smooth dirt she saw a small opening and a bit of air, and below that was water. It was moving. Was it another underground river, or maybe the same creek that flowed beside the path and it was severely undercut? They would never know, but after Marie walked around the grassy area she did discover that it was full of small holes that also went clear down, about six feet to the underground stream. Marie dropped a pebble into one of the holes. It plunked with a hollow sound as it sank into the dark water. It was so spooky. They were literally standing on holey-ground.

The two cousins decided it was high time to skedaddle. Marie went first, leading Rune. Moe was right on Rune’s heels. They were not sure, but if they had to guess, they figured Rune’s next move was due to stress, possibly a repercussion of the day’s events. Rune kicked out fiercely at Moe and almost got him in the head. Moe felt the wind created by Rune’s hoof swoosh by his ear. Moe cussed and backed off a bit, giving Rune the space she was needing. As soon as the cousins got to a wide spot, they exchanged places for safety’s sake.

Marie had not reprimanded Rune for kicking, as she had no way of knowing what had triggered Rune to kick. Maybe something had touched her and she thought it was a danger. Who knows what goes on in the minds of a horse?

They reached the road, regrouped and headed on their way back to the rig. Moe, of course, had to make his horse lunge cross-country to the top of the canyon, and again expected to have to wait for Marie to join him. He planned on being first, like always.

Marie rode on the winding road to join up with Moe atop the canyon. Marie asked Rune to gallop so she could work off some of her pent-up energy. Marie arrived first at the meeting spot this time. Moe was surprised to see Marie waiting there for him. The riders were very lucky that day. Maybe there are guardian angels watching over these silly earthlings.

Moe and Marie’s Slip and Slide

Thorp Mountain is located in the heart of Washington State. Cousins, Moe and Marie headed up the rugged mountain trail on horseback. Their destination was Thorp Lake. It is a good ten miles ride into the Alpine Lakes Wilderness to where the lake is located.

Moe was riding his mare, a palomino named Spice and Marie was on her buckskin gelding, Dandy.

They rode up the steep and winding Forest Service trail, which was mostly in deep forest. When the riders reached the eight-mile point, the trail dipped over the edge of the mountain.

This is where the terrain made a dramatic change to become open and desolate. The path became non-existent on a steep hillside. A land slide had taken the trail out, leaving no trace of tread in its wake, only sandy soil.

They came to a blind corner with no way of knowing what lay ahead and it was too narrow to turn around. Marie decided to test the ground on foot. Dandy stood with his reins looped loosely around the saddle horn, which was his command to just stand. Marie was carefully placing each foot ahead of the next. The sandy corner was OK to travel on, the ground seemed stable enough. The trail resumed, with better footing, just out of sight from the slide area.

Moe was instructed by Marie to send Dandy over by himself and Marie would catch him up on the next corner. Moe leaned forward without dismounting and gave Dandy a spank on the haunch, sending the gelding forward. Dandy obediently trotted quickly over the sand leaving hardly a print. He made it just fine to Marie’s waiting hands. She slipped her hand deep into a pocket and fetched him a horse cookie as she patted his neck. Moe rode his mare over the iffy ground. The footing was getting more precarious the further he went. He didn’t like to show fear, but his face revealed his desperation to get off of this corner of hell.

The next couple miles were ridden in silence, each rider with heavy minds.