Lightness of being

I rode Champagne outside yesterday, for only the second time since November. This has been a tough winter. I guess I might have been able to ride him in the snow over the holidays, but I was very new to the barn and not sure of the terrain. I didn’t want to risk having him step in a hole or flounder into a creek. Then we had all that ice, and he was having some trouble just making it from the barn to the paddock without falling down. Clearly, having me on top would just have made matters worse.

Once I did try to go out on the trails with a group, but that day Champagne was all distraught and not listening to me . . . just a series of, “OH NO, there is a narrow place on the trail! Oh NO, there is a little hollow with some TREES! Oh NO, a dreadful STONE WALL!!” I decided to turn back rather than fight with him and maybe have him bolt and get injured.

Yesterday we went out with the goal of just riding around the grassy areas below the paddocks to accustom him to the surroundings. By now he’s been out enough that he has had a chance to look over the fields from several angles, and the snow has melted enough that it is clear where the little streams are located. I happened to run into Shea’s owner, who wanted to do the same thing, and Shea and Champagne are calm with each other, so we both went out.

The sky was wide and high and clean-slate blue. The grass was golden and green. The slender waterways were free enough of ice that I could hear their little chuckling sounds. There were a variety of surfaces to walk on; hills, gravel, squishy semi-mud, ice, crusty (but not deep) snow, grass, and the field that had been plowed and planted last year. Many of the other horses were out in the paddocks, running and playing. All in all, lots of alive distractions and sweet brisk air.

Amazing! The WBH was perfect. He went where I asked, followed Shea if I asked but turned away when asked, stayed interested but calm, and most amazingly was responsive to my legs in a way I don’t remember him being before. If I wanted trot, (which I did just once, for a test) we had trot. If I wanted to walk across the narrow culvert over a stream, OK, we did. If I wanted to walk through a long patch of crusty snow, he asked, “Are you sure?” “Yes,” I said, and walk through we did.

So: all the leg work and transitions from gait to gait and within each gait to different speeds seems to have paid off big time! My boy and I seem well positioned to have a great series of trail rides as soon as it gets less icy on the main trails. Schooling in the indoor can, I admit, get boring and sometimes it seems I am getting nowhere. This one day outside was a major payoff. Yes! This is what I’m doing all this for.