Borderline Animal Cruelty or Good Clean Circus-Like Fun? Fair Hill Park, Oct 2, 2010

I mistakenly call it the third of October; it's the second. Caught this capture after returning to my car with Sam after a four-mile run. Some people might think that running so far (3 to 5 miles) and so often (at least twice a week) is a form of cruelty, but sam won't let me get into the car without a ton of drama about his wanting to go and his anger at possibly being left behind while I go out running. I guess he perceives the actions leading up to my departure--he knows when I'm getting ready to leave. So... that said, I gotta figure this woman riding in the carriage is about a two-hundred pounder (not being rude, just estimating weight here), and that carriage has lots of metal frame and wood trim and I'm guessing the seat frame is wood... Let's call the carriage about seventy-five to one hundred pounds. That's three hundred pounds, plus or minus a few, being pulled along gravel roads, up hills and down hills, in the sun. Admittedly, it is cooler today--55 degrees--but that's still a lot of effort so that this senior-woman can ride around in her funky cowboy hat and smile at the other equestrians. I don't know. You decide.

Strangely, as I was getting back to the lot, in the last tenth of a mile in the woods pathway, which is narrow at points, these two female equestrians approached. So I stepped well off the trial--about five feet, and got Sam out of the way, also. The front rider could barely control her horse, as it squirmed and resisted, and I thought at one point it might buck up on its rear legs. I had music on over earphones, and when I shut it off, she said, "You need to talk" apparently, in order to calm her horse down so it would walk past me and Sam. I said a few words, but the ones I wanted to say included: "What are you drinking to get to thinking that your total lack of control over your horse makes coming out to Fair Hill a smart idea, when you will almost certainly encounter hikers, dogs, bikers, and who knows what???" I don't want to be uncivil but I also don't want to enable what I think are bad decisions.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• animal
• cruelty
• fair
• hill
• park
• cecil
• county
• md