YEAH! Trailrides

Saturday I hooked up with a friend and we went up to the barn. One of my barn friends has two horses, one of them an aged gelding who is starting to sway because he isn’t being ridden as much as he should but he’s a great babysitter – and a good “guest” horse. The friend I brought doesn’t ride that often but is very physically capable.

The sky was overcast and the wind chill, threatening rain. I pulled out the “guest” horse, who seemed very surprised and delighted to be taken out. Then I called for Griffin, who I could not see from the one dry spot in the pasture. I whistled and called and heard a responding nicker – there is nothing better than that sound. I called for him again and he peeked around the corner with a “Time to go?!” look on his face and ambled on up through the mud.

While we were grooming them a trailer pulled up in the driveway. We don’t get a lot of strangers and we are a very small boarding community, so anything like that is off great interest. It was a mom and daughter (?) who had come by to use our indoor arena – with our barn owners permission. (I hope they are paying them for use of the arena, it would be the polite thing to do) Its always enlightening to see other folks riding style. These were hardcore western people – the horse’s head/neck did not really move while they were riding her (very pretty mare though).

We toodled around in the arena working on controls and collection. Then we headed down the road. We are very luck to have a nice long dirt road and then a dead end shortly at the end of the pastures. Typically, when the footing is good, we head down the road, turn off onto the deadend and then trail ride through the woods at the end. Well, since its mud season, the deadend is only 3/4 good – so we went down and turned back around. The ponies of course picked up their pace thinking “woo hoo – time to head back to the barn!” Well as we got to the beginning of the deadend and back to the dirt road, we turned them away from the barn and rode all the way down to the end of the dirt road. We had a moment of “Are you sure you don’t want to head back to the barn? Really Really sure?” and then they settled down and headed off. We got some nice measured trotting in, a brief canter and even went past the noisy scary dogs without issue.  As we came back down the dirt road, the horses’ eagerness to be done prompted me to make an executive decision to head back down the deadend again. They turned off mostly without issue, but I did not turn us back around until they settled. When we got back onto the dirt road, we saw that some other boarders and the barn owner were just heading down the road, so we decided to join them. [the uber goal is to be unpredictable and keep the horses out of a pattern] They went down the dead end and they were all walking well – my horse for once being willing to be in the pack rather than leading it. We went into the bad footing at the end of the deadend carefully. One of the male boarders decide to ask his horse to go into the impromptu creek that had formed in the ditch. The horse went through it fine, but coming back decided it would be just better to jump it – ha ha that’s a sight – jumping in a western saddle. (Maybe that little appaloosa really wants to be an eventer?) Then the same rider decided to move into a canter once we got into the good footing. I have never been prouder – my boy did not move out of a fast walk – he would normally have been chomping at the bit to race them. The really interesting sight was the barn owner on her Clydesdale, who REALLY wanted to race, being held back to a parade trot. What a beautiful thing to see – that clyde really moves in collection, wow.

So we returned to the barn and untacked and finally gave the horses what they’d been waiting for – a few cupfuls of grain. (They only get this when they’ve been working, so its quite a treat)

I live for the weekend days like this – when all is right with the world and we just move at a pace that is natural, no rush no fuss – just spending time.

~Kelly