Saturday Ride

On Saturday we met up with Shasta’s leaser and took her for a short ride to show her how to get to one of the trail accesses by our barn. The one park we can get to by walking down the road for about 100 yards. The other requires going down a private path on the barn property, then using a maintenance road, a driveway, and walking through a picnic ground. It’s actually really easy, but it’s harder to describe than it is to do, so we like to walk people out to it.

We also make our new leasers do a ride with us where we make them do all the grooming, tacking up, etc to make sure they know where everything is so they can handle it when they’re on their own. Shasta’s new leaser was carefully grooming her and cleaning every little bit of her and I simultaneously wanted her to hurry up and also not because, hey – at least someone will properly groom our horses. I generally do a quick brush and hoof picking and call it done.

We all went out together so my husband was on Nilla and I was on the wooly mammoth.

Happy mule

I have been avoiding shaving Dijon because he’s been in such limited work and blankets are annoying. Apparently February equals shedding season though so I’m going to need to shave all that hair off. I hate shedding and his coat is soooo thick, I will not be able to deal with this.

Wooly mammoth sun bathing

I don’t think I’ve ridden Dijon in about a month and he’s only been ridden a few times in that month because of a combination of rain and forced rest after he injured himself running into a gate. So he was hyped. The problem with this horse is that normal pay attention/slow down methods don’t work on him. As we were coming back from the picnic ground, we were literally sidestepping across the entire parking lot. My husband was like what the hell is wrong with him. The new leaser was like, wow, those are some impressive dressage skills.

The one advantage to him being this hyped is it’s about the only time I can get him to really do a running walk. He would prefer to break to a pace, but if he’s only allowed to go faster if he walks, he will fly at the walk. It’s such an amazing gait to ride. He can walk as fast as another horse canters and you feel like you’re just floating along – no bouncing.

We gaited up the hill and I hopped off to wait for my husband and the leaser to run up, but Shasta had a temper tantrum about being forced to wait, so they just walked up.

Waiting

We went back to the barn without much incident, untacking and rolling was accomplished and then ponies were all shoved back in their stalls so my husband and I could race off to a dance class.

Such a good old boy