A Wet Winter and Good Neighbors
by Dennis Bright
The month of January was the single most challenging month that I've experienced with our horse ranch business. The rain that began in December was at first manageable until the ground became over-saturated . Our ranch is located on the west side of the valley at the base of the foothills, so the water ran off the side of the hills right through our property. During the normal winters of the past few years we weathered the storms just fine. Unfortunately, there was nothing normal about the 'Flood of '95.'
Back in November, we started 'winterizing' the ranch with the help of a friend of ours, Ed Enos, who works for Cal Trans and has plenty of experience when it comes to flood control. We started by ditching around the west side of the barn and paddocks to divert the runoff around the barn. Then we built up the stalls and paddocks with the hopes of keeping the barn high and dry. After that, we went to work on trenching a drainage for the round-pen where I do a lot of my horse and rider training. By this time I felt we were well -prepared for the rainy months ahead of us. After all, we had learned our lessons from the wet winter of '93, just two short years ago. Right?
Wrong!! By the middle of January, the paddocks were so flooded the horses wouldn't leave their stalls. As if it wasn't already hard enough wading through the mud that was hock deep in places to feed and water twice a day, the barn began to flood. First the stalls and then the breezeway went under until finally I started considering giving white water rafting lessons!
A couple of days later as I was sitting around wondering if the sun was ever going to shine again and starting to feel just a little sorry for myself , I heard the honking of a horn in my driveway. It was my neighbor Tony Diaz driving up on his tractor wanting to know if I needed some help making the barn usable again. Well, I thanked him for his offer and we went right to work scraping out the paddocks and the barn. Two days later, the Bright Ranch was back in business. The lesson I learned from that rainy month was to never give up and that adversity is a true test of character. My many thanks to all of our friends and clients who helped out when the going got tough!
One of the bright spots during the past couple of months has been our new horsemanship student, Terry Griffin. He chose the worst winter in 118 years to learn how to ride, so I kept telling him the weather was just a temporary setback. Caring for and handling horses really is a lot easier once the ground dries up, and thankfully he was polite enough to humor me. Talk about committed! Every Saturday morning at eight o'clock Terry would show up ready to start his lesson. His enthusiasm was a great motivator for me and kept my spirits up. Terry was so excited about his newly gained knowledge that one week between lessons he went out and bought himself a horse trailer. I told him the only thing missing was a horse, so the following week he bought one of our geldings, "Buddy", who I was planning to use for a lesson horse this spring. Then he went right over to our friends at the Feed Barn and bought "Buddy" a beautiful new saddle. Terry is a great example of how important the new horse owner is to today's horse business.