Phantom menaces

All hail the sun! It is back! Imagine . . . maybe we’ll have some nice days after all.

Riding in the bright cool sunny evening is such a pleasure. Champagne, too, seems more willing to work, and we’ve had some very nice canter sessions. He seems more responsive to my leg, and more maneuverable. I wonder, though, if riding “patterns” will ever get automatic for both of us.

We have also had some interesting conversations about where we will go. After working in the outdoor, I usually ride him around the perimeter of the property to cool down. That means we leave the ring, go down a small grassy hill, along a track that crosses two little streams, along a dirt road with a tomato field on one side and a wooded depression on the other; then a turn along the second side of the crop field along a dirt road with a stone wall along one side; another turn along the top of the crop field with trees and brush along the left hand side, through a narrow place between trees on one side and a paddock fence on the other, and then back up the grassy hill to the barn.

Champagne is dubious about the safety of the wooded depression and sometimes spooks there; as well, he has seen deer across the stone wall, so he is concerned about the safety of the dirt road.

Yesterday, after the torrential rains and tornado warnings of the week, the landscape is a bit different. The two small streams are now more like ponds than streams, and the places where the road crosses them are narrow and partly under water. The crop field slopes toward the wooded depression, and some soil and mulch had washed across the dirt road, leaving swirly patterns of darker and lighter dirt. As well, a tractor had driven on the dirt road, leaving a cross-hatched tire pattern. Oh my.

First Champagne decided we couldn’t cross the two small streams. Much backing up and turning around and snorting and sidling. I kept asking that he cross, and he was pretty forceful in resisting, but I finally got him up to the first stream, where we had to snort and sniff the puddles. At last he walked through.

Then we came to the swirly patterns. Definitely a danger. More backing, turning and snorting, but these I had to control more because the tomato plants are being trained up metal stakes, and he could get injured if he thrashed into them. Eventually we minced around the swirly patterns, and they did not actually eat us.

Then it was on to the tractor tracks. Those were beyond suspicious: those were an actual menace. Impossible to walk across them!! More acting up, snorting, head tossing, balking. Deeply worrisome!

In this way we made it all the way around the cool-down circuit and back to the barn. Throughout I was more amused than anything, and tried to remember to sit deep and calm in the saddle, not look at any one of the obstacles other than just as a passing glance (because the more I stare at something the more he thinks it is a concern), and to tell him what a good boy he is and that it is all okay in my calm, soothing-while-grooming voice. So even though we had some really nice canter sequences in the ring, I think I enjoyed the cool down lap the most!

He was very cute when we got back to the barn, too. I don’t have pockets in my pseudojeans riding tights, and usually I give him a piece of carrot for standing still as I dismount. Last night I had the carrot piece in my brush box in the barn. But Champagne is used to getting it right away after I get off, even before I loosen the girth. Last night he kept bumping me with his nose: Carrot. Carrot. Not hard bumping, just a nudge. Carrot. The bumping stopped after we went inside and he had his carrot. He may not be a very person-centric horse, but he has a definite language and speaks very clearly.