Trail tale

Four of us from the barn went on a nice long trail ride Sunday. It actually wasn’t raining, just overcast, cool and damp. Not buggy, oddly.

One reason I like this new barn so much is that there are lots of people around, and many of them want to “hack out” as some of my English contacts on http://www.trotontv.com say. So anyway, four of us, with big Friesian Thor in the lead, followed by Shea, a black appendix quarter horse, then Rocky, a roan quarter horse, and then Champagne. Mary, Thor’s mom, knows the park well, and led us to an area I’d never explored that’s across a street. It winds through a Christmas tree farm, and is fairly hilly.

Cath had said to try to ride on the buckle to see if Champagne would walk faster and keep up with the group. We’ve been practicing trotting on loose reins, and he sometimes puts his nose really close to the ground and gives a big trot. What I realized is that I have been keeping fairly short reins on the trail, partly because he has spooked from time to time from sudden bursts of rabbits or turkey poults scuttling out unexpectedly, and partly because of his habit of grabbing mouthfuls of leaves.

So I tried riding not exactly on the buckle, but with a much longer rein than usual, and at first he did keep up with the group. (You’d think he would want to!) As he got more tired, though, he began to lag again. Then we would have to trot to catch up every time the trail was root and rock-free enough to make speed safe.

I think I have pretty much convinced him that snacking as we go is not worth it, so the looser rein worked in that regard. His only real issue was when we passed a pen with both a GOAT and a DONKEY in it. Snort snort. Stepping sideways. Bounce bounce. It was (oh my) a ferocious goat. Might have eaten us up whole.

We went down some pretty steep rocky hills, and Champagne was careful and surefooted, though I notice the shod horses’ feet had some slips and slides. All that up-and-down is good to build the muscles in his back and rump, plus it is more fun than going around and around in the ring. We trotted up some pretty steep hills, and that was good for him as well. He sometimes wanted to trot downhill as well, but mostly that didn’t feel safe because there were too many rocks.

We were out about two hours, and today I feel fine. We’ll see how Champagne feels when I ride this evening (thunderstorms predicted). I wouldn’t be surprised if he felt a bit stiff. After all, he was the one doing all the work yesterday!