Water

Bonding with Gaizi

Gai-zette, or Gaizi as I called her for most of her life, was my horse, and we were going to go trail riding in the farmland around Omaha, Nebraska where I got her. She was a pure-bred Arabian mare, whose daddy was a famous Polish race horse, and after being imported to the United States, a show champion as well. Gaizi inherited his speed, but not his good looks. So she was not really pretty enough for show riding, (or so I was told), but that did not matter to me, she was not going to be a show horse with me as her owner! I was going to learn how to ride her, and we were going to be riding trails!

However, working at Strategic Air Command Headquarters got in the way of that, so we ended up breeding her instead. When Gaizi got her first look at her first new baby, a filly we named Cyra, she went nuts and became a full-fledged momma! That was interesting enough. What was really interesting was her new idea about what our relationship was going to be. She was the momma, and I was another of her children! That was weird. I was supposed to be the boss. Yeah, right!

We let Gaizi raise Cyra until it was time to wean her, and (silly us) we bred her again, this time ending up with a colt we named Clip. (Naming horses, especially Arabians, is a challenge. Their registered names are usually some combination of the parents name making it something you never want to say out loud. So, we always gave our horses "barn names" that were more fun to use! Gaizi knew her barn name quite well, especially when I was the one calling it out. She always came running to see her "kid" in the hopes that he brought her carrots (which I always did!)

After we weaned Clip, Gaizi was done being a momma, except that she still treated me as her kid. She would put up with me leading her around, and eventually we did get into a riding mode, so we started doing what I wanted to do - trail riding.

In college, I raced motorcycles in Enduros, cross country events that covered about 100 miles over very rough terrain, so I thought riding cross country on a horse would be fun as well. So, Gaizi and I started off exploring the dirt roads around Pony Creek Farm South of Council Bluffs, Iowa, where our good friends John and Jayna Guehlstorff kept our horses while we lived in Omaha, and for many years after I moved away.

What about the water?

We will get to that, eventually. What got me thinking about our water adventures was having to drive through a chunk of road that was a bit washed out due to rain the other day. You might of heard about rain. It is that funny stuff that falls from the sky so seldom in Texas, we forget what it is! The little patch of water made me remember a day near the Rio Grande river in Albuquerque, when Gaizi and I took a nice ride.

Albuquerque

I was stationed at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque for the last assignment of my Air Force career, and Gaizi accompanied me there.

This is a Google Earth view of the area today. Isn't this cool, you can zoom down and explore the town without even leaving your chair. I used this to explore the area where I lived and see what has changed since my last visit several years ago.

Albuquerque sits in a valley right to the west of the Sandia mountains. The area is about 20 miles square with the Rio Grande river running right through the middle of the area. The mountains to the east were over 10,000 feet above sea level at the top, and about 6000 feet above sea level at the base, and the river was about 5000 feet above sea level. You got used to the altitude when you lived there, but it took a while. The land gradually rose from the river to the base of the mountains, and from the mountains you had a commanding view of the city and the entire valley!

Sunsets in Albuquerque could be spectacular. When the sun got low it shined through dust in the air turning everything a deep red. You always wanted a camera handy to catch some of these views!

To the west at the edge of the city was Petroglyph National Monument, a ridge of black lava rocks with hundreds of petroglyphs painted by prehistoric Pueblo Indians, long, long ago.

Beyond that Monument was a mesa that also rose up to about 6000 feet above sea level and beyond that was the desert, with more mountains in the distance. A typical horizon might be 150 miles away, and you got used to seeing that far all around town.

To the north of town was the Sandia Pueblo, home of the Sandia Indians who owned much of the land from the river to the mountains. In the distance you could see more mountains, where Los Alamos is located. To the south, the Isleta Pueblo land stopped the city from expanding in that direction. This Indian reservation covered the land just south of the base where I worked.

Gaizis home

At the time of this story, Gaizi was living at a facility right in the middle of what was called the North Valley, north of town (duh!), and about 100 yards from where Alameda Boulevard crossed the river.

This valley was a favorite for hot air balloon pilots, who came to Albuquerque every October for International Balloon Fiesta. The field where they gathered was only a few miles from Gaizi's barn, and we frequently saw sights like this:

Gaizi was not thrilled at the sight of a hot air balloon in the sky near her, but everyone who lived in Albuquerque got used to seeing them in the sky all year long!

Paseo Del Bosque Trail

The barn where Gaizi lived was about 100 yards from the river, near the Alameda Boulevard bridge that went over the river, and right beside an irrigation ditch that was used to water fields along the river. There was a narrow dirt road along that ditch, that was a favorite for trail bikers and horse riders. It ran for miles through town, making it a natural for long distance exercising!

You can see the place where Gaizi lived in this view from Google Earth. That small barn just below the marker for Paseo Del Bosque Trailhead next to the irrigation ditch was not there when Gaizi lived on there. Her barn was more to the right of that current barn.

Rio Grande Boulevard is the road just to the right (east) of the property. It ran south toward the city center. Between that road and the ditch were some of the most expensive homes in Albuquerque. The Unser family of Indianapolis racing fame owned property just south of Gaizi's barn, right off of Rio Grande Blvd. Their home was easy to spot. It had a painted steel cut out of an Indy car mounted on the gate. "Little Al" even had a chunk of wall from the Indianapolis Speedway right behind the gate, something he crashed into during one of his races there!

Most of the homes along this road had grass fields in the back, and a lot of these were bounded by that irrigation ditch. Gaizi and I spent a lot of time riding along the back side of some impressive real estate!

Between the ditch and the river was an area known as the Bosque, filled with small trees, bushes, coyotes, and all manner of things that liked to live near the water.

Oh yeah! Water

Even though this is a desert area, there was still enough water around. Some of the water was diverted from the river into those irrigation ditches, and from there it was piped into fields with a small dirt berm that ringed the field. The technique was called "flood irrigation", since they would let water flow into the field until it was totally covered, then it would soak in. It was a nice way to get stuff to grow in the desert southwest. There was a problem with this scheme, though. If enough folks diverted water from the Rio Grande, eventually there was no water in the river at all. I remember driving through El Paso, Texas, along the same river hundreds of miles to the south, and there was hardly any water to be seen in the river. That was interesting. As I drove along the river, by a big fence on the U. S. side with Mexico on the opposite side, I saw a Border Patrol truck pass by going in the opposite direction. After that truck was out of sight, I watched about a dozen people run down the hill out of cardboard shacks on the Mexico side of the river, right through the "river" and through a break in the fence to the U. S. side. When I was a kid the term "wet backs" was used to describe people who did this, but that was a joke. At most, they got the bottom of their shoes wet! I suspect much of the unskilled work force along the river was these folks from Mexico trying to get a better life in our "rich" world!

After Work Rides

One day, after work, I hurried home, changed my clothes, and drove to the barn for an evening ride. Gaizi was always eager to see me, since she spent a good deal of her day standing in a 12x12 stall, and me showing up meant she could escape from that and explore the area.

I had a nice Austrailian Stock saddle, one I bought after watching "The Man from Snowy River" many years ago. In that movie, the Austrailian saddle was talked about as one invented by convicts who would steal horses to escape from their prison work. The saddle had leather "leg rolls" sewn in along where your legs sat. These rolls ran along your leg, and curved up and slightly over them. This wedged you to the saddle, and helped you "stick" to the saddle as the horse moved around under you. The story goes that the convicts could not ride, but these saddles kept them on long enough to escape. What was not explained was how the saddles came to be built in the first place. Oh well!

I took Gaizi out of her stall, to an area where you got the horse ready to ride. I put a blanket on her back to cushion her from the saddle, then took the saddle and hoisted it up over her back. Then I pulled the cinch under her belly, and pulled it tight. You have to be careful doing that. If the cinch is too loose, the saddle might spin around the horses body when you try to climb up into the saddle, something I found out the hard way!

With the saddle properly in place, I took the bridle and slipped the bit into her mouth as I pulled the bridle up over her head and around her ears. Gaizi put up with this, but her eyes were on everything around her, and occasionally, she would take her head and kind of butt me with it. "Hurry, up! There is grass to eat out there!" she would be saying! Occasionally, she would rub her forehead on my side, and was known to knock me over when she did this if I was not careful! (Remember, she was thinking she was the boss!)

I would then lead her out of the barn and jump up into the saddle. This was always harder than it looks in the movies! She was fairly tall, and I really had to stretch to get my foot up in the stirrup, then jump up high enough to pull myself up and over her back. Then the ride was on.

Off into the sunset

By now the sun would be starting to go down. We would walk away from the barn toward a stand of trees on the edge of the property. There was a gap in the fence where we could walk through to a big field next to the road that ran up to the bridge over the river. We walked over to the road, then along the side of the road up toward the bridge. When we got to the irrigation ditch, we waited for traffic to pass, then rode across the road (it was marked to let folks know horses would be crossing here), and we continued along the ditch for maybe a mile.

The scenery was spectacular. The Sandia Mountains glowed red as the sun got low in the western sky.

We approached another wide ditch that ran from the Sandia Mountains to the Rio Grande. It was formed by rain water running off the mountains heading for the lowest spot in the valley, and that was the river. Much of the time, this ditch was dry as a bone. But this day, it had some water in it. As luck would have it, the water covered the trail I wanted to ride along. The trail went across the ditch and onto Indian land, then wandered through the trees that line the river. As we approached the ditch, Gaizi seemed to get nervous, and I could not figure out why. On some of our rides, coyotes would sneak up behind us and she would sense them and twitch her ears, but this time there were none of those critters around.

We walked right up the water and she froze. I tried to nudge her forward, but she was having none of that!. I tried a few more times, and gave up in frustration. I jumped down and took the reins and tried to pull her forward. I was forced to stand in the water, which was all of six inches deep! She still would not move forward. I even tried to get her to drink some of it, surely she would do that! But no, not today!

Boy, could she be stubborn!

So, I finally pulled her sideways and we walked along the ditch (and water) until we came to another crossing point. This time, I tried to guide her into the water again, and she let me do that! Wow! What was wrong with that last crossing? I got back up on her, and we rode into the trees away from the ditch. Gaizi got excited now, and we picked up some speed, trotting into the woods. The tail wound along through the woods, zigging and zagging along. The view of the surrounding scenery faded into one focused on the trees and fallen logs across the trail.

One thing that took some time for me to get used to was riding along a trail and coming upon a log across the path. In my motorcycle days, I would ride up to the log, crack the throttle to pick up the front wheel, and power over the log so I ended up jumping it. On horse back, you come up to the log, and, magically, you step over it with no fuss at all. Durn, I was looking for something else there. Levitating over logs was just weird! I eventually got used to it.

Gaizi picked up more speed as we rode the path through the woods. We would weave and turn back and forth as the trail wandered, and my focus was always on the trees. Occasionally, there would be a tree bent over the trail. Not so low we could not get by, but low enough that I might have to bend over to keep the tree from knocking me out of the saddle. Gaizi would pass by these trees as close as she could, I suspect thinking "I can get this idiot off of my back in one move here, if I do this right". But I fooled her, and never managed to fall off.

We could ride like this for many miles in the Bosque that lined the river. Then we would come to a clearing near the river's edge, and rode along the river bank back toward the barn. As long as I did not ask Gaizi to turn toward the river, she was fine with being near the water now. She even sensed that we were headed back to the barn and it was hard to hold her back. She wanted to gallop home, and I was usually too tired from the long day to put up with that! I was known to yell, at no one in particular but my horse, "Gaizi, you stupid idiot! SLOW DOWN!" She acted like she did not understand me!

As we got back to that evil ditch, we just happened to come out at the same crossing we managed to get over earlier, and this time she walked right through the water without hesitating. Weird!

Another short ride along the irrigation ditch and we approached a small park right next to the bridge. We dropped off the ditch bank into the park, which was full of folks enjoying the river. There was a dirt road that went under the bridge to a similar park on the other side of the road. The bridge was very low at this point, far too low for cars to go under, so the city bulldozed the dirt road and made it deep enough where it went under the bridge so cars could get to the other side. Great! All we need to do was go under the bridge, turn east for maybe a half mile, and we would be home!

So, I guided Gaizi onto the dirt road and we headed down under the bridge.

Big mistake!

There was water in the middle of the low point under the bridge. No problem, we were over that silliness, right? Right!

Wrong!

Gaizi walked up to the water, took one look and leaped straight up into the air, and onto the bank beside the road! This happened with me on her back! She had managed to jump maybe three feet up. The scary thing is that she was almost tall enough to just fit under the bridge at that point. That was fine for her, but I was on her back! Where was I going to go. Well, in between the steel girders that made up the bridge, that is where I was going to go! I was shocked by this move, and even more shocked to find myself in a small area under the bridge and all I could see was steel beams everywhere! Fortunately, Gaizi was content to just stand there, so after I calmed down a bit, I managed to climb down. I was then able to lead her the rest of the way out from under the bridge!

I looked back into the ditch, and only saw a small pool of water, maybe a foot deep.

Then I noticed something. The water was muddy. Gaizi could not see through it. Thinking back to our first problem, that first water crossing we came upon was also muddy, but the second was not. Gaizi could see the rocks beneath the water at that crossing, and it did not bother her, so she went right across.

Horse Psychology

Apparently, muddy water is 10,000 feet deep. There is absolutely no way Gaizi is going to step off of that cliff! No sir! All I had to do from that point on was to make sure we only tried to cross clear water! No problem! Never ride on any day when the water is muddy!

I also learned a very valuable lesson. Always wear a hard hat when riding cross country. My silly straw cowboy hat would have done nothing if we had been even a foot further over when she jumped up on that bank!. I would have been knocked out cold!

You can Lead a Horse to Water

After this fun event, I began a long, unfruitful, process of trying to cure her of this problem. Any time I could, I would try to lead her through water, usually with me on the ground in front of her so she could see it was not really 10,000 feet deep.

No dice! She never learned this lesson, so I just put up with it.

Revenge!

She even got back at me one day. She was standing in a pen ringed by a hot wire along the top of a fence. The wire had an electric current pulsing through it and any horse silly enough to sniff it with their nose would get a shock and learn to stay away from the fence. But Gaizi was smarter than that! She knew what she could do with such a wire.

I put a lead on her, and walked her toward the gate to that pen. There was a big water tank, maybe three feet deep next to the gate. The tank was kept full so the horses in the pen could drink. Gaizi was on my right side, and the tank was on my left as we approached the gate. I stopped and opened the gate, then swung it out of the way to the right so Gaizi could walk through it. As soon as it cleared her, Gaizi jumped sideways, crashed into me throwing me off balance, and then she started through the gate.

Guess where I landed, butt first! Yep! Right in the tank. That was embarrassing enough, but the clincher was that I grabbed that stupid hot wire with my left hand to try to keep from falling full force into that tank.

So there I sat, one hand on a pulsing electric fence, my butt in the water, making an excellent ground path for all that electricity, and I was sitting there getting shock after shock until I finally let go of the wire and stumbled out of the mess.

Gaizi? Well, if horses could laugh, she was standing there doing just that! She was proud of herself, that was clear!

I Miss Her

Gaizi has been gone for quite a while now, but I still miss her. Are there muddy water crossings in horse heaven? I sure hope not. Every time I an sitting in a movie theater and see this TriStar Studio film clip, I think of my beautiful Arabian Mare.

I hope there are plenty of carrots there for her!