A few weeks ago I took my new mule, Choctaw, for a trail ride with some friends. Since I had only ridden my Choctaw twice, I really wanted to get Colleen's opinion of him.
Paula had offered to take him on some bosque ditchbank rides to get him used to bicycles and other urban experiences, and Choctaw and her foster mule were buddies, so I let her keep him at her place. But I decided to invite her up to the mountains to join my friends for our trail ride up at Fourth of July Canyon, so it just made sense for her to bring Choctaw up for me to ride.
But first I asked Colleen to ride him for a little while, while I rode her mare. Notice, the britchen that Choctaw is wearing? That britchen involves a long, terrible experience surrounding the obnoxious behavior of someone I had falsely believed to be a friend.
I hadn’t bought a britchen for Choctaw yet because I was told by his previous owners that they never used one on him on their trails and hills and his saddle never shifted forward. Indeed, while doing his test ride, we rode down into a deep arroyo and his saddle stayed in place. Also, when I rode him at the Mule and Donkey Event just a week earlier, Paula told Allen, another friend, that Choctaw’s saddle fit him well and he didn’t need a britchen. So I trusted everyone’s opinions and information.
But when I saddled up Choctaw for our Fourth of July Canyon trail ride, Paula said I needed a britchen and she offered to let me use the one she had, even though it was the only britchen she had brought. I was actually surprised that she hadn’t brought me an extra britchen since she has two, one for her mule and one for her foster mule, especially since I had only had Choctaw for only a couple weeks and she had told me that he didn’t need one! If she thought Choctaw needed a britchen and knew she had told me earlier that he didn’t, then a good, kind friend would have…should have brought an extra britchen to share or at least should have told me that we should put off riding at Fourth of July Canyon until I bought Choctaw a britchen. I could have ridden Apache afterall!
But our trail ride started off well. Choctaw was perfect for Colleen and her mare was wonderful for me. There were 11 of us heading out to ride together on the beautiful trails at Fourth of July Canyon in the Manzano Mountains.
Colleen's mare is much taller than I'm used to and feels very comfortable, but a little like riding a tall elephant smoothly lumbering through the forest.
My friend Kristi liked having her horse tailgating Colleen's mare because he tends to be very forward and chargy and it makes her nervous when she can't control him, but she likes to use Colleen's mare as a wall to slow him down. Choctaw was happy to stroll along way in the back.
It was Colleen’s first time to ever ride a mule and she kept saying how comfortable he is and how relaxed and wonderful he is on the trails. I was very proud of my new mule!
We had two young boys on the ride,the horse in front is actually a talented Mounted Shooting horse.
The forest was so beautiful and green. Every time I looked back at Colleen and Choctaw, Colleen was grinning from ear to ear. Mules just make you smile!
Some of these photos in this post were taken by Paula. Here you can see me riding Colleen's mare out in front and Colleen on Choctaw.
Pretty cool looking dead tree…..
See? You can’t help but smile while riding a mule!
At one point a couple miles down the trail, we had to enter through the Wilderness gate….
Choctaw walked right through, relaxed and content to be out on the trail….
C and my awesome mule Choctaw!
The trail was a bit steep and narrow in sections and there were rocks and boulders, but Choctaw easily covered it all and had no problems even though he has mostly been ridden on the flats and on the rolling hills of the Chupadera Mountains in Southern New Mexico. But I have spoken with his previous owners who owned him in Oklahoma and they had taken him to the Winding Stairs Mountain Recreation Area in the Ouachita Mountains at Cedar Lake Equestrian Campground
for a long weekend of camping on trails that varied from easy to very rugged. And even though he was ridden every day, all day, he never was sore and was always ready to head out on the trails.
The game plan was for Colleen to ride Choctaw until we stopped for lunch and then we would switch…..
Standing on the Crest of the Manzano Mountains beneath Mosca Peak.
Me up front with Colleen and Choctaw behind.
And we finally made it to our lunch/rest stop where I tied up Choctaw, and he patiently waited until I was done with my lunch.
And then we all saddled up and got ready to continue down the trail.
See my face? It’s impossible to ride a mule without smiling!
Choctaw is so comfortable to ride!
And those ears! Sometimes they stand straight up, sometimes they spread out like airplane wings, and sometimes they just flop all over the place.
The trail was very thickly overgrown and it was kind of magical to ride through all of that lush green, especially when you live in a desert state like New Mexico.
Antenna's (Ears) Forward!
Yep…..still smiling!
Airplane ears flying over the Crest of the Manzano Mountains!
Smiling huge here!…..Gotta love those airplane ears!
The switchbacks began…………and this is where Paula began griping, complaining, and whining about not having a britchen on her mule because my mule was wearing it instead. It didn’t matter that she had offered it to me at the beginning of the ride and she even put it on my mule. Didn’t matter that it was her choice to loan me her britchen and not bring another one for me even though she believed that BOTH of our mules would need a britchen. Didn’t matter that she was supposed to be a good friend who should be helpful and not hurtful to a friend, and not set up her friend to fail.
No none of those things mattered, because she raised hell and caused a scene and made all of us on the trail ride listen to her complain. She chose to dismount her mule because she said he was not happy about going downhill and his saddle was riding up on him. She chose to walk the remainder of the trail ride, and even played the martyr and refused anyone’s help or assistance. Willow even offered her son’s horse to ride, but Paula refused! I even offered her Choctaw to ride and I would walk. I was wearing my Ariat hiking riding boots, so walking would have been no big deal for me. But she refused! And she even went so far as to loudly proclaim that she was walking to “teach me a lesson and make me feel bad”…exact words! I already felt bad, but I was angry that she could be so needlessly cruel.
Paula did take up Colleen’s offer to pony her foster mule, but ironically was very rude towards Colleen on several occasions during and after our ride. She was also rude towards others too. When anyone made a silly joke about our mules, or about us riding an ass, Paula would roll her eyes and comment “horse people!”. She complained to me at the beginning of the ride about Colleen being late to the trail head. And Colleen told me later that evening on the telephone when she called me, that during the ride whenever she teased that if I ever deciding to sell my mule, she wanted to be first in line, Paula rudely said, “Lisa better never sell him to the likes of HER!”.
And then when the majority of our group rode on ahead without Paula,(and I was glad, because I was tired of hearing Paula whine and complain) she trailed behind with two other riders in our group, Loeta and Cory, probably complaining all the way back to the trail head. (I was later told by Loeta that yes, Paula did frequently complain, yet she still refused any help or offers to ride their horses)
Her behavior was really horrible. And I was so embarrassed that I had even invited her on the ride!
When I got back to the trail head, I took her mule and mine and unsaddled, untacked, brushed down, and watered both mules. But when Paula returned to the trailer, she never once acknowledged what I did for her and just sulked around and shot me evil looks. I even hung up her bridle, britchen, saddle, scooped the manure, placed hay bags back inside the trailer and loaded my own mule into her trailer. She never even said thank you.
What she did say was that she was going to bring my mule back to my house and she wasn’t going to ride him on her ditch bank trails. She said it in a very threatening way. I think she thought I would beg her to keep my mule and would be offended…but seriously? I would have never let her take Choctaw back to her home after the terrible behavior she portrayed towards me and my friends. She seemed surprised when I agreed with her but then told me that she thought I wasn’t the best person to own a mule and that I should sell him to her (By the way, this was at least the 4th time she had asked to buy him from me! Yes, I got a good deal on him, and she knew it. And she acted jealous and seemed to want him for herself, even telling me that it was a good situation for her since her foster mule would be going back to his owner at the end of the summer, and her own mule was still laid up from an injury, so she would need another mule to ride.)
But, when I told her no…. Yet again, she got upset and started criticizing me about the britchen, about taking Choctaw on mountain trails, claiming they were too rugged for him and it was cruel of me. She complained that I didn’t douse Choctaw in fly spray before our ride, even though there were only a few flies at the trail head and none on the trail. She also chastised me about how I asked my friend Colleen to ride Choctaw and give me her opinion. Paula claimed that her opinion should have been good enough for me!!
She even made me cry out of anger and frustration. I don’t do drama well and I rarely ever get angry. I'm also very softhearted, which seems to make me an easy target to be other people’s doormat. But here's the kicker......when I was crying, Paula was LAUGHING at me and saying how 'hilarious' (her exact words) it was that I was crying.
When we finally got to my house and I took my mule back, she once again told me I should sell Choctaw to her. She actually said, “This is your last chance. You sell him to me and I’ll do all the hard stuff with him, and I’ll let you ride him and do the fun stuff”. Exact words! I was offended that she said that to me. I then offered her a check for $100 to cover the costs of feeding him and scooping his poop for the couple days that Choctaw was at her place. My intent was for her to finally realize I was severing all ties with her. She greedily snatched the check from my hand, just as she'd done with all the hundreds of dollars of gas money and countless lunches I paid for her over the past year.
But then as I walked up the hill to my barn, she even had the audacity to yell out loudly, “Give him some of Apache’s Previcox tonight”. She said it as if she owned him or thought her opinions mattered to me!
What the hell?? Why would he need my mare’s arthritis medicine?! He was not sore after our 7 mile ride, he was not even tired. And he’s only an 8 year old mule…not a bit of arthritis in his joints.
I had to shake my head in disbelief as I ignored her “request” and continued walking, because one of the things she harped about during the short time that I knew Paula over the last year, is that she knew best when it came to taking care of her horses and mules, and she didn’t put up with people telling her what to do for her animals. In fact her favorite saying is “My Mule, My Rules!”.
Well, she was crazy insane to even think I would consider selling my mule to her.
Later that evening Colleen called me at home because she had seen me crying and was upset that Paula had caused it. And on the phone with me, she was angry...no...furious...with Paula's horrible behavior. Colleen aggressively told me on the phone that "that nasty woman had better never show her face at my business nor try to ride with me again". Yes, those were her exact words.
(But I later discovered that Colleen is a fake friend, a user and a manipulator and will say and do whatever she needs to get her way or get what she wants. In fact, a year later she is best buddies with Paula. Talk about a backstabber!)
Well, other than discovering that some people I thought were friends actually never were, and they just seemed to have used me to get invited to rides and be shown my favorite trail routes, the ride at Fourth of July Canyon was absolutely wonderful! Choctaw was perfect and did everything I asked. He even led for a while when we had to bushwhack around a fallen tree and he made me smile the entire day.
Now if only people could be as wonderful as animals, life would be perfect.
(All information in this blog post is the truth as I experienced it.)
