Author:
Kathy
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Date Posted: 16:51:51 12/14/01 Fri
Kathy:
Thanks very much for your words about how you got back into the saddle and have managed to make it all work with your family. I followed Kent's lead and followed up on, `Rding for the handicapped', and as yet haven't found anything that works for me. As you know from my comments to Kent, I am pretty remote from prosthetists in terms of distance so any solution I come up with has to be worked out locally, and soon! I would appreciate it if you would ask your husband if he thinks 4" stumps are too short for stubbies. This has been mentioned to me before, but the answer was that it is possible but not very practical. The advantage of stubbies is that when we make camp at night hand or hip walking is a messy business when the site is not cleared, is littered with stones, dead wood, etc. and most of the time damp, or damn wet.
On the ranch we have a saddle maker and boot maker(!) of many years, Jose, who knows about all there is to know about leather craft. He keeps our harness, saddles, chaps, gun holsters and belts, rifle holsters, and even boots in good shape for the men in the bunk house, hands around the ranch, my younger brother and my family. He also does free-lance work for other ranchers when they need it, even though his shop and cabin is located on our ranch.
I read to him your message to me, and with a twinkle in his eye he pulled out of a cabinet a prototype for his equivalent of your "saddle shorts." He had collaborated with my wife to make the prototype before mentioning it to me. She is very clever with pattern making and sewing, and has fitted my jeans to my stumps. Hence, she was able to give him a pattern to work from. It is very similar to your version, with the following differences. It is of a fairly tough, heavy hide with the stumps also encased in leather to protect them both when in the saddle or on the ground. Since it is winter and getting cold, he lined the whole thing with a sheep skin. It is just like a pair of pants, with a fly secured with leather straps and lock snaps (very easy to open and lock closed. He has rings secured to the pants for quick connection to several straps fastened to the saddle. These can be cinched up to secure the pants to the saddle. Like yours, he curved the back of the waist up to give me added stability.
Needless to say, we went directly to the stables and saddled up my mare, Princess. I slipped into the pants which fit almost perfectly, tightened up on the cinch straps, and tried them out in our arena. They are unbelievably comfortable. Getting carried away with the results, I aksed them to bring a couple calves in so I could try roping. Despite the fact that I was out of practice, I managed to do it with considerable accuracy. But the most extraordinary thing is that somehow Princess quickly picked up verbal signals instead of the spurs. Animals have uncanny intuitions at times. I have always used spurs very sparingly with her, but now of course there were none to give her signals. She is a very good cutting horse so I imagine when we get in a herd she will do very well after I have trained her more specifically to respond to verbal signals.
Tnaks again for your interest and help. My best to your husband.
Charlie (and Princess)
P.S. We will be bringing a herd from the upper pastures to lower pastures next week. I hope I can go with the guys. This is an overnight deal, so we will see how the pants work out. I will take a pair of short crutches and see how manageable they are.
C.
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