Updates!

Wow!! Time has flown since the kids went back to school!!  I kind of fell into a slump and haven’t done much of anything for the last two or three weeks.  No riding to speak of and really barely any time with the horses period. 

I have so much to say I may break this up into a couple entries just so I don’t bore everyone!!
  Yes I know he should have a helmet and boots on but it was spur of the moment and I was RIGHT there.

Zandy will be first because she’s fresh in my mind!!  I think I briefly told you about her in a past blog, but just to recap – she’s a late teens QH “type”, about 15 hands, formerly was a camp horse and she’s FABULOUS with the kids in the ring.  She’s got plenty of get up and go for confident riders outside of the ring too, but you can see her eyes change when you step down and put a child on her.  She totally switches gears and her steps become very deliberate and she lowers her head and just takes care of her rider.  Really she does this for any rider – she does it for me too but she can also kick it in gear when asked – but she has to KNOW that you mean it.  Some might call that lazy, me?  I call it being a good, sure mount!!

Zan is reminding me how to ride again, and while we did have one incident that scared the hell out of me we overcame it just yesterday and I’m VERY happy with my decision to keep her.

The kids have been having an absolute blast with her.  Kenneth has been trotting her all by himself – talk about a heart attack for mommy!!  Yikes!! 

I have been having a blast with her in the ring and in the field but when it comes to leaving the yard, my anxiety kicks in like crazy and that makes her nervous.  We were doing ok until our “incident”.  I was excited to take her over to the loop by the Lodge – I haven’t had a horse that liked water since Buck died and I really just had this feeling that she would love to play in the water and that she’d be a great trail horse for me.  We got half way across the field and there was a kayak in the river.  I tensed up, I know I did but I kept talking to her and told her she was fine.  All of a sudden, we were spinning and she was snorting and I was FREAKING OUT!  I never grabbed at her mouth or anything, I never reacted badly – or I don’t think that I did. But once I got her stopped, I stepped down and we walked home.  Her snorting the whole way.  I decided that she wasn’t the horse for us.  After all, if she’s going to do that crap then I didn’t feel safe with the kids on her on a trail ride.  In the ring FINE nothing flaps her but there was no way I was going to put the kids on her for a trail ride……So for the last 3 weeks she’s been ridden maybe 2 or 3 times just in the ring and once in dad’s yard where I learned that she does kick ass roll backs and really likes to “play”.

Yesterday I decided I was going to try one more time to go ahead to the Lodge Loop.  We got to the end of the driveway and I was tense, she spun and snorted and I took a deep breath, smacked her and said walk on!  And we did!  We ended up going up the path instead of the road but so what?!  We were moving forward!  We went up around the barn and up past the garden and across the field.  My thought was that if I just did the little trails up behind dads I’d be happy.  We trotted up across the field and all over the trails out behind dads.  She is like a bull dozer!!  She plows thru trees and brush and anything else that gets in her way.

I noticed that the more her feet moved, the less snorty she got.  So we trotted quite a bit.  We came out by the pasture and I decided to “cowgirl up” and head across the field.  Zan didn’t want to but I insisted and when we got to the scary kayak spot she started to freeze up and get all “twitchy” so I pushed her forward and told her she was fine.  We got all the way across the field and went down towards the water – she was fine but the grass was slippery and she slid a little so we came back up the bank and crossed the road.  She didn’t want to cross over and started being foolish so I did the same thing I’d done in the field and on the trail – I pushed her faster!!  We started jogging and she forgot all about the scary ditch and on we went.  There was a Heron in the water, and I was silently praying that it wouldn’t take flight but it did (of course) and she stopped for a minute and watched him fly off.  We went down to the pump house – the water is really low and the rocks looked slippery so I was nervous about letting her in the water so we headed back to the road and I figured I’d see how she was at the boat launch.

When we got to the boat launch she charged right into the water YES!! Finally!! A horse that likes water!!  Wahooo!!!  We didn’t play too much because I had my cell phone in my pocket and I didn’t need for it to go swimming!!  We had a great time on the entire loop and even talked to a very nice lady who said she’s been dying to meet me as she used to have horses and loves to see me/us riding out near her!  When we got across to the lodge road, I decided to go ahead up the trail that has a stream crossing with a bad bridge so you have to go thru the water which means that I haven’t ridden this loop in a long while because no one would cross the water!! *sigh*

Anyway – she went right across the water, up the bank and plowed on thru back to the main trail!  I really didn’t even have to steer, she just goes on like a bloodhound on a trail!  We were almost to the other end of this part of the trail and came across a downed tree.  Silly mare was going to plow on thru it.  I tried to find a go around but there was no way to get around on the right, and the left was looking pretty bad too but I decided to use her “bulldozerness” to my advantage and go to the left.  We squeezed thru some trees and under some branches and we were thru!  We came out on the road and started towards home. At the same house where Buddy did his ditch diving last time we came across this little guy:

Still had his spots and was oh so very cute!!  He bounded up into the trees and just watched us go on our way.  Course, there were some “scary” chickens across the street that we had to look at but they trotted off and left us in peace.  We did have to scoot up a bank to get out of the way of some moron who was driving WAY too fast on this stretch of road and coming at us around a blind corner.  I don’t think he ever saw us, but I could hear him coming and could tell he was going fast – luckily we were at a spot that we could get out of the way.