Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Trail ride!

The last few days of riding have been really fun!  

Over the weekend John came out to ride with me on our friend's horse, JJ.  John wanted to have a 'lesson' in the arena to work on posting the trot.  I have to say, he did really well and caught on quickly.  I think it really works in his favor to have such strong runner's thighs.  He wasn't getting 'left behind' the motion as badly as most beginners do when learning to post the trot!  He was enthusiastic and had a good time!  This was the first time he was sore from riding and he finally realized how difficult it must be to do that for 50 miles!  This ain't no walk in the park, sweetheart!  I LOVE getting to ride with John.  He is so fun!  I rode Boomer while I helped John and I was so proud of my little pony!  He just did whatever I asked without spooking or looking at anything!  I was so thrilled when I realized that I hadn't been paying attention to Boomer at all and he was still just packing me around like a champ!

I rode Boomer on Monday and he was just a little resistant at first.  Not soft in the bridle at all.  I was a little irritated at first, but I spent a little extra time at the walk and he warmed up into it and we had a good ride.  For whatever reason, he just needed a longer warm up.  

I usually only ride every other day because Boomer can get cranky if he is over ridden (in his perspective, haha).  However, I got bored on Tuesday and went out to ride him.  Turns out, he was in a great mood and his work ethic was ON ON ON!  I rode in the outdoor arena and he was very forward, in a very good way!  His trot pace is usually much slower in the arena than on the trail but he was giving me his 'race pace' trot, so we went with it.  We did a little cantering as well and he was forward enough that I went up in 2-point and let him gallop a few laps around the arena.  How fun!  I loved feeling him ramp up!  Too bad the arena was too small to really let him go!  After about an hour, I decided to turn the day into an aerobic training day and we just kept trotting.  I took him out to the large roping arena and let him long trot some more at race pace for another 40 minutes or so.  I think we rode total for about 2 hours at race pace trot with a few minutes of hand galloping.  He did great for me!  

I had planned to give him a few days off after that, but the barn ladies wanted to go for a trail ride today so we saddled up and headed out again today!  We had a blast and walked 90% of the time.  We did some trotting and cantering in the open fields.  We were out for around 4 hours.  We had a group of 6 horses: 2 warmbloods, a lippizan, a QH, a TWH/foxtrotter cross, and an Arab!  What a mixed group!  Boomer was awesome.  No prancing, nervousness, or head tossing.  I have zero to complain about!  I used renegades on his front hooves as he is bare right now and sensitive on gravel.  So, I put them on for the .75 mile walk to the trail head, took them off for the trail, then rebooted for the walk home.  He did great with that plan and I didn't lose any boots!  

Smile, Boomer!

JJ in the front, Chunky the Lippizan to the right, Flanny the Grand Prix schoolmaster in back.  I got to see Flanny do a series of 2 tempi lead changes on the trail.  He must of done at least 10 of them.  It was awesome!



Here is Charmy the TWH/fox trotter on the left and Cambria the WB on the right.


We stopped to play in the water a few times!  Fun!


Yay Boomer!  



2 comments:

Shanster said...

FABULOUS! Such fun!! It's what summer is all about...

Anonymous said...

You are having so much fun! Tell John it took me a year to figure out how to post acceptably, he is doing much better.

Scott