Ah the wonderful Tuesday night summer trail ride at Latta! I haven't been in a few weeks, one time the weather decided we didn't need to ride, the next week Niels decided he needed to work late. Ah, but it was worth the wait!
As I have been trying to do I played mostly on the ground in the morning to gear up for the trail ride in the evening. That way, I know we've been on the same page before I load up and head out to the trail. We played with the weave on the 22ft line using barrels that were layed down. Funny thing is near the end she offered to jump one, and I said "sure" let's just jump all 4 in a row! She did and I think she felt very smart for it, too!
We loaded up around 5:30pm, and my 8 year old, Christian, loaded Duck onto the trailer. She's becoming quite the champ at traveling! To the point that I can hardly believe that we ever had trailer loading issues at all. Up she goes, straight on in, and stands patiently for me to do the butt bar up and come around and clip her in. My 5 year old got a bit hasty and tried to load Eli before Duck bar was up. She squeeled, and kind of bumped the divider, but didn't try to back out! Yippee!
Did I mention it was HOT. Really hot. 93 but feels like 100 hot, which for this trail ride worked in my favor! We got there, and the horses were already sweating up a storm! Saddled up, moved her around a bit and then sent her to a bench for me to mount. She came right up and we rode on out of the parking lot.
I know that sound pretty boring riding out of the parking lot, but it was huge! In fact, this was the very first time that we had ridden out of the parking lot ( minus a couple non-savvy rides on my part where I should have 2 years ago). Before this ride I had always driven her from zone 3 out of the parking lot to make sure she was ready to ride. She was calm, she even led for quite a bit! Another huge success for us!
And then, to top it all off, we cantered! Four times (not for too long since it was hot). And once she even led! WOW, WOW, WOW! She cantered like a champ and felt totally in sync, and had brakes to boot! I could not of asked for anything more. So you see, the heat played into my favor for cantering, but it was well worth it. We all had a wonderful, warm, relaxing fun trail ride that did feel a bit cooler in the shade of the trees.
I've had this conversation with a bunch of my horse friends. It seems like all foundation work I have been trying so hard to get going well is finally starting to gel. And I am REALLY liking it! I am not saying it hasn't been hard to be patient. I've wanted to trail ride so much in the past but the few times we did go out it was obvious we weren't ready. I can see the difference now, and I wouldn't trade that for anything!
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