Hitting the Trail
Happy 4th of July to everyone! We decided to take the day off for a change, and it was a very welcome respite.
First thing we got up and loaded up the trailer to go for our first trail ride. I've had Jordan out on trail a handful of times, but we've never been the big trail riders. The times that I have gone I've gone with our friend Jay. He's always told us that he'd be willing to go anytime we were, so we called him up and asked if he wanted to take us out on the 4th.
It took us longer to get loaded up and ready to go than we thought it would. All of the horses loaded fine - it just plain old took longer than we anticipated. Good thing we were aiming to be at the trail head 30 minutes before our scheduled meeting time... becuase this way we were in fact only 9 minutes late.
Jay had warned us that the parking lot was a little tricky - so we drove by the day before to scope it out. Tricky didn't do it justice. We could not imagine trying to get in there, turned around and parked - with TWO horse trailers no less. Certainly not if there were other cars there. That was one of the reasons we wanted to try and be early - to beat Jay and his trailer if nothing else ;)
Alas, that didn't happen, which is just as well as Jay was able to help coach Dave into getting turned around and parked. Dave is getting the hang of that trailer - it's a 4 horse slant, so it's about 28 feet long. But without a lot of practice it'll still take some time before he's fully comfortable. There is just something about the fact that your cargo are your horses and you'd rather not jostle them more than necessary that adds to the pressure.
Jay invited his frequent riding partner - Vicki - to ride with us as well, so the 5 of us headed out together. The weather was spectacular, and the trail was perfect for out first time having the ponies on the trail (in other words - it was a "Green" trail).
All of our guys (Jordan, Shoshoni and Rio) were eager to get out. You could just see it in their eyes as they got off the trailer. So, there was quite a bit of trotting and wrestling to keep the horses from running up over the horse in front of you for the first 20 minutes or so... but by the time we stopped to take the pictures above they'd all settled in pretty well. Later we agreed to all try a canter, but since Jordan was leaping and bounding rather than cantering we kind of put a kabosh on that. Actually it was pretty amusing, most of the horses could canter in time with Jordan's trot anyway. Considering that we had 3 arab types and a little quarter horse, this isn't all that surprising.
On the way home we stopped at Vicki's house -- to pick up a new horse! More on that tomorrow.
First thing we got up and loaded up the trailer to go for our first trail ride. I've had Jordan out on trail a handful of times, but we've never been the big trail riders. The times that I have gone I've gone with our friend Jay. He's always told us that he'd be willing to go anytime we were, so we called him up and asked if he wanted to take us out on the 4th.
It took us longer to get loaded up and ready to go than we thought it would. All of the horses loaded fine - it just plain old took longer than we anticipated. Good thing we were aiming to be at the trail head 30 minutes before our scheduled meeting time... becuase this way we were in fact only 9 minutes late.
Jay had warned us that the parking lot was a little tricky - so we drove by the day before to scope it out. Tricky didn't do it justice. We could not imagine trying to get in there, turned around and parked - with TWO horse trailers no less. Certainly not if there were other cars there. That was one of the reasons we wanted to try and be early - to beat Jay and his trailer if nothing else ;)
Alas, that didn't happen, which is just as well as Jay was able to help coach Dave into getting turned around and parked. Dave is getting the hang of that trailer - it's a 4 horse slant, so it's about 28 feet long. But without a lot of practice it'll still take some time before he's fully comfortable. There is just something about the fact that your cargo are your horses and you'd rather not jostle them more than necessary that adds to the pressure.
Jay invited his frequent riding partner - Vicki - to ride with us as well, so the 5 of us headed out together. The weather was spectacular, and the trail was perfect for out first time having the ponies on the trail (in other words - it was a "Green" trail).
All of our guys (Jordan, Shoshoni and Rio) were eager to get out. You could just see it in their eyes as they got off the trailer. So, there was quite a bit of trotting and wrestling to keep the horses from running up over the horse in front of you for the first 20 minutes or so... but by the time we stopped to take the pictures above they'd all settled in pretty well. Later we agreed to all try a canter, but since Jordan was leaping and bounding rather than cantering we kind of put a kabosh on that. Actually it was pretty amusing, most of the horses could canter in time with Jordan's trot anyway. Considering that we had 3 arab types and a little quarter horse, this isn't all that surprising.
On the way home we stopped at Vicki's house -- to pick up a new horse! More on that tomorrow.
Labels: Ranch
posted by Monica at Sun Pony |
9:16 AM
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