Acrobatics

Friday I had one of those 50/50 rides where 50% of the time Walker was ignoring me and 50% of the time, he was doing what he should but I was failing him as a rider.  It started out that I couldn't get him to really move out at the trot, regardless of all my usual tricks - transitions, turning, etc.  I figured that maybe I had been schooling him too hard on some of these things so I decided to take it easy.  Of course, the minute I put him on a loose rein and resigned myself to a simple hack, he kicks it up a gear and really started to move nicely.  Unfortunately, at this moment, I decided I should work on my seat/hands/legs/etc and ended up really being more of a hindrance than anything else.  Oh well.  You win some; you lose some.

Today I had a fantastic ride though.  I arrived at the barn in the afternoon and found one of the women, S, literally walking around and around the barn on her horse.  She invited me to go outside with them (to the scary unfenced outdoor arena), and although I normally like to warm Walker up indoors first (read: wear him out), I decided to just go with it.

Outside, he was everything I expected him to be.  He continuously tried to put just one foot outside the arena boundaries, just to show me whose boss, but S, who was watching, had me just figure-eight him at the trot for awhile to get his mind working again.

After about 10 minutes of that, S went inside and B (who was riding her horse during all this) asked if I wanted to go on a trail ride.

I am fortunate enough that Walker's outside problems are only defiance: he doesn't want to work.  But he's not spooky and he loves the trails.  So out we went to wander through the woods.  And when I say trails, I mean, some of them were normal trails that could fit a couple horses side by side, but some of them were like hacking through the brush - barely as wide as a horse and possibly just deer or moose trails.  B is new to the barn too so she has been just exploring them on her own.

At one point, Walker decided he didn't want to walk through a puddle so he went around.  There was a huge low-lying branch which I thought would either bend or break.  It didn't.  The next thing I knew, I was hanging over the edge of my saddle, both feet in the stirrups but my head down near my right ankle and my other foot way up in the air.  God bless Walker.  The minute he felt the shift in weight, he stopped immediately and I was able to scramble up into my saddle again.  B, who is an older woman, simply exclaimed: "I don't think I could have bent like that!"  Yeah.  I didn't think I could either!

We had a pretty great trail ride all in all.  We did some trotting and cantering through the woods and really just explored.  Even though it didn't feel like we worked hard, Walker was drenched with sweat by the time we got back and it was definitely 10x better than anything we could have done on the arena.  Here's hoping I can get us out on the trails a few more times before the snow and ice hits!