Obviously most people have one or more hobbies they like to spend their free time on. While my husband and I do have quite a few interests, the one and most important hobby we share is our mules. It’s not just trail riding, it’s really our mules, and everything that concerns them.

This seems to be an attitude that seems hard to understand for many people. When it turned out Larry cannot be ridden anymore, we figured okay, until we can have Steph’s new riding mule over we would go on the trail taking turns riding Katie and leading Larry. That made our friend Michael stare at me in disbelief. But then we would be pretty slow, no? Only at a walk? Well, yes, we would only be walking, but we would all be together, doing something fun! That did not sound like fun to Michael, who likes to mainly trot and lope on the trail. If I would like to see landscapes whooshing by me, I would ride a bike or such! We, our mules and our dog like to go on the trail to watch the scenery (and Mandy, the dog likes to sniff, of course). We also go for walks, not even riding at all.

Larry’s hobby used to be trail riding. He enjoyed it above all other things, which is saying a lot, because he loooves to eat. Steph had only to get into the saddle and the two went on the trail with Larry’s ears flopping and his eyes beaming. Katie loves trail riding too, but only if the trail is interesting (which it is only when we ride it for the first time). Katie’s hobby is meddling with things that actually don’t concern her at all. She loves observing and keeping an eye on things, including all of our neighbors, and will, if not prevented by us ignorant humans, get to the root of things. This includes anything and everything out of the ordinary, be it an old towel hanging on the indoor arena rail- sniffing it for a quarter of an hour, she must be the Sherlock Holmes of mules. I bet she could have told us who used that towel last and for what!- or the one eyed kitty on the arena owner’s arm. If she thinks something is not done as it should, she will wrinkle her nose and assume an annoyed facial expression. This includes everything our neighbors do on their property, and if not held back by the lead rope she would walk right up to see if everything is done as it should, in her eyes!

Apart from in general inspecting things and events, she has a decided partiality for standing on a tarp or a bridge and fall asleep at once. If the tarp is small, it’s totally sufficient to have two hooves on it to take a nap then and there. If the bridge has a log in the middle so that you can rock back and forth, she will rock back and forth on her own and then steady it by standing on it only with her forelegs and take that nap.

We spend every Saturday morning in the indoor arena to entertain our mules. Yes, we do some training, but also the mules spend the first quarter of an hour rolling and running. Then I will ride Katie some, working on nothing more but having her supple and responsive, while needing as little pressure as possible. While I ride Katie, Steph will work with Larry or if our trainer Anja is there too (she comes to work with us twice a month) she will work with Larry. The Steph will ride Katie. This gives Katie the opportunity to enjoy her latest hobby: teaching Steph to ride (he can ride, but still considers himself a beginner, and Katie thinks she needs to show him how things are done). She hugely enjoys that!

Larry, having lost his favorite hobby due to his back problem, is no longer depressed when he is being walked on the trail instead of being ridden. Still, he rarely flops his ears. We cannot yet take him with us as a pack mule, as that would mean one of us would be on the trail alone riding Katie and leading Larry. I had a very bad wreck almost twenty years ago, resulting in the death of my horse, and I had been on the trail alone. This was of course also before there were cell phones, so I was really all on my own. Since then I have not been riding alone anymore, and I will never do so again. Hopefully, when we have finally found a new property and have Steph’s new mule over, Larry will enjoy being a pack mule as much as being ridden. Until then we have decided to start all ground work with him as if we were breaking him to drive. His training now will consist of working on the lunge line, then working with two lunge lines (this will also be very good for his topline and general fitness), and if he likes all that we will see if he would like to be trained as a carriage mule. If this is too scary for him, it doesn’t matter to us. He doesn’t have to pull a cart in the end, we just want to give him something to do and see if we can find a new hobby for him that he enjoys as much as trail riding. If you had told me before we got Larry and Katie that a mule can have a hobby that he would be really sad to lose, I would probably have thought well, that cannot be too bad. But having seen Larry being pretty depressed about not being ridden, I can totally understand. I hope we can give him his earflop back one day.

It seems to me that mule people are much more aware of what their mules like to do and what they dislike, and enjoy doing things together. Perhaps this has something to do with how a mule can better express herself, or how you probably cannot get a mule to perform perfectly if her heart isn’t in it and she doesn’t enjoy what she’s doing. I seem to have a hard time explaining this to horse people. When someone tells me what he does with his horse, and I ask “So what does your horse like to do best?”, I usually can’t get an answer. When we still rode in the huge indoor arena of a training stable and met “regular” horse people, I often got incredulous looks. Katie would walk up on the bridge and settle down for a quick nap, while I would also take a break and watch Steph and Larry, or other people. Someone would invariably call out to me and point out that obviously my mule refused to go off the bridge, and I would answer, no, she thinks she can take a nap and I have no reason right now to not let her (yes, people in general thought we were weird). While we stood on that bridge taking a break, I had ample opportunity watching horses not enjoying what they were asked to do by their riders, and I was wondering made this fun for the riders. Those were recreational riders, it’s not as if they had to do what they did. Yes, it was the human’s hobby, but obviously he had forgotten to make sure to have an equine who shares that hobby.

The indoor arena we use now belongs to a nice older lady who does carriage driving with her two ponies. She enjoys watching our mules and has no problems accepting our mules’ hobbies. Her ponies love carriage driving above everything else, so that’s what she does with them!

Isn’t it nice to share your hobbies with the whole family? Happy Trails to all M&M readers, and a very Happy New Year 2012!