Trail Ride

I'm trying something new, called writing about myself/Rush from a more fictional approach. This is the result. It was a lot easier to write than being straightforward, and also a lot more fun, so I think I might stick with it.

 

"Really? I mean, really? It's a little mini pony, Rush. It's not going to eat you." I twisted my lips together in an annoyed grimace, turned her around, and walked past the miniature horse for the 16th time. Like all the others, she shied sideways and kept a nervous eye on it well after we had passed the pony.

Obviously we were getting nowhere. I couldn't continue riding because the pasture the pony was in shared a fence with the outdoor arena, and she was focusing on everything but me. This was not how I had wanted my first ride in three days to go.

Frustrated, I gave her a loose rein and walked out of the ring, up towards the barn. We had only been hacking for 15 minutes, not nearly enough time to hop off and call it quits if I wanted her to stay in relatively good shape. I tossed the idea of going on a trail through my mind. She hadn't been on one before, not a real one, and she could be spooky at times. But on the other hand she was always more relaxed wandering around the property than in the ring.

Hoping I hadn't made some giant mistake, I turned her down the trail head and we marched off through the forested tunnel. I had no idea where we were going, I figured that once we hit a fork in the trail I'd just turn around and come straight back.

Cobwebs were strewn across the trail at my height; obviously nobody had ridden this trail in a while. The first time I ran into one I did a panicky dance, scrambling to brush the elusive web off of my face. Rush stopped after I dropped the reins and craned her head around to watch me as I fidgeted. "Sorry girl," I laughed, then took to riding with one arm stretched out in front of my face.

We wandered down the path for a few minutes; Rush was relaxed, I was a little less so. The worst thing she did was keep stopping to smell poop. I ended up having to do some interesting acrobatic contortions to avoid thorny blackberry brambles dangling dangerously from overhead. When it became obvious that Rush could care less about being out on the trail, I slid the reins through my hands and let her walk on the buckle.

My stomach growled, and I was instantly reminded that I hadn't eaten since breakfast. It was at least three by now. I glanced surreptitiously around, then halted Rush and reached out to pick a blackberry. It was tart and firm, warm from sitting in the sun. At first there was a flash of guilt; these haven't been washed! Who knows what you're eating? But I pushed it aside quickly, and greedily grabbed more from the brambles. Rush fidgeted anxiously, taking a few steps backwards before I cued her forward.

The rest of the trail was a repeat of the first five minutes, with me stopping every minute or so to madly brush cobwebs from my face or to pop a few blackberries in my mouth. Rush was obviously not concerned with the fact that we were on a trail; she was alert but relaxed and walked with a swaying tempo down the trail. A fallen branch lay across the path; she knocked her back legs into it and snorted in annoyance, but didn't scoot off. In the ring she would have had a fit.

The trail dumped us out onto a crossroads of gravel pathways extending in all directions. She had been tender footed on the gravel earlier in the week, stumbling and daintily picking her way through, so I was apprehensive about continuing onward. While I deliberated she took matters into her own hands and marched forward. I figured if she started having problems we'd just turn around.

She picked her way through, sounder than before but not entirely comfortable. We walked for a minute or two until we reached a housing development and the gravel road turned into pavement. Walking on pavement, potentially getting lost, and having only the scenery of a housing development? No thanks. I turned her around and we marched back to our forested trail. The way back was much smoother, mainly in part to me having already collected all the spiderwebs.

Jordan had finished with her lesson by the time I got back on the property, and we chatted briefly as I walked back to Rush's pasture. At first I felt self-conscious- had she seen Rush spooking at the mini? Did she think I was a bad rider? Our conversation quieted, but did not quell, those deep-seated fears.

"How was your ride?" was her innocuous conversation starter, the go to question in the horse world when you don't know someone very well.

"It was good! She doesn't like that mini down by the ring very much, though." I didn't mention that we hadn't worked through it as thoroughly as I would have liked.

"A lot of horses don't like her, must be something about the size. I had a mare once who was terrified of her- wouldn't go within a 20 foot radius. Then one day she got over it and started treating the mini as a foal. I guess it brought out her protective instinct."

This made me feel a little better. Rush had always been nervous around minis, but there had never been one on the same property as her so it had never been an issue. Maybe she would grow out of it. Maybe one day in the far off future I could ride in the outdoor ring without having my horse leap sideways because DEAR LORD IT MIGHT EAT ME. That must be what they think, right? I can't imagine them being afraid of miniature horses because minis might, I don't know, walk under them. That doesn't seem very frightening.

Empty

Still hard to believe I'm not going to get up tomorrow morning and go ride my pony here. I will get to visit one last time though, to pick up the return check for the security deposit.

Away to WA

 Well, today was the day. I headed off to the barn around 6:30 and got there a little before 7. I hung out with Rush for a bit, giving her one last brushing and feeding her treats before I went to pack up the last crumbs wandering around. I found the mane and tail brush, miraculously, and had to re-open the tack trunk in order to cram it in.. that was fun. It involved lots of grunting and straining and wondering why the heck they designed the locking mechanism for the trunk that way. I wrapped her legs before heading into the lounge to wait for the trailer, and good lordy those were some finicky  wraps! I have two sets of two different wraps. One of the sets was stiffer than the other and I had a hard time wrapping her leg without the end sticking out oddly; it refused to be tucked down and basically made my life really difficult for like ten minutes. Eventually I got a decent job done. Around 7:30 Bob Hubbard called and said they would be there shortly, so I dragged my trunk out and snapped some last minute pics of my pony before taking her out to the trailer. She was an angel loading, never even hesitated and marched right on, which was a relief since I didn't actually know if she got fiesty loading or not. After a couple minutes of packing up they were driving down the street, headed to Washington!

Busy Busy Bee

Rush is scheduled to leave tomorrow morning, and I'm kinda freaking out because man, it's SO CLOSE! I had my last ride at the barn and it was so bittersweet; I'm really sad to see this chapter of my horse life close because it's been so good to me. I really could not have asked for better care, and everyone there is so friendly and welcoming that I felt like I belonged there even though I was easily 10 years younger than the next youngest person there. The facilities are top notch and it really just opened my eyes to just how badly neglected my last barn had been.

The Coggins paperwork was finally tracked down, thank goodness, so that's all taken care of. I've packed my tack trunk chock full, barely managing to squeeze everything in. It's definitely a tight fit. I'm leaving a saddle and bridle behind, as well as some spare legwraps and a saddle pad or two.. but otherwise pretty much everything is coming with. Just remembered, I forgot the treats. Oops. I don't really have room for them, so I guess I'll leave them behind as well.

Rush got a nice bareback hack today, then a fungus back to get her scrubbed clean. I'll be back in a few hours to give her some time in the turn out and brush her more, as well as finish the packing aka lock everything in the trunk and label it. I express mailed the deposit to her new place yesterday to make sure that it would get there before she did, so I'm relieved that everything's taken care of on that end at least. I'm really having a hard time realizing this is it.. no more late night chats with Sue, no more treat assembly lines down her row.

I'm supposed to be packing for myself too, but there hasn't really been any motivation. Mostly all I've done is cleaned up my room and done a ridiculous amount of laundry. After Rush leaves I'll really need to kick my butt into gear and get going!

Precision Planning

Rush is not amused.

Oh god I am so relieved/ecstatic/overwhelmed by joy. Pretty much everything's set in place for Rush, and I don't have to worry about her getting stuck down here without me because something fell through. Her Coggins and Health Certificate were done today, vaccinations are happening tomorrow because of my lovely barn owner who I cannot thank enough for being so on top of everything, and the trailering service has Rush penciled in on their next northbound trip.

I spoke to the BO of the place we're moving too, and she was so nice and friendly and enthusiastic and helpful it was all I could do to not break down in happy giggles while talking to her on the phone. The pasture is a one acre lot with a cute little one stall stone barn that has a tack room in it too. It's fenced in by these gorgeous carved wooden rails (fingers crossed Rush doesn't decide to become a chewer) and is the closest pasture to the main barn. It just sounds so perfect and idyllic and gah, if that is what I'm moving to it won't be so hard to leave the place I'm currently at.

All I have to do is mail the deposit and everything's golden!

Lazy Few Days

The past two days have been pretty laid back. Yesterday the vet was supposed to come to pull blood for a Coggins test and do a health certificate, but I guess there were some emergencies and he ended up rescheduling. Unfortunately he didn't make that call until I had waited for three hours at the barn.. oh well. Today it was ridiculously hot and humid, so I walked around bareback for ~20 minutes until she was sweating and breathing heavily, then tossed her in the turnout for a few hours.

Friday we had an AMAZING ride. I opted for a saddle since my bum was getting a little sore, and Rush just buckled down and went to work. It was awesome. She was steady and relaxed into the contact, and her focus was on and everything felt great. We had some wonderful trot work and some lovely canter work, and it's rides like these where I wish we could start jumping! I don't want to push her too fast, though, and she still has balance issues that have manifested in straightness issues that I want to work out before we move up.

Hopefully tomorrow it will cool down some, so that I can actually ride!

2 For 2

We had another lovely ride today, although this one was more in the pattern of our typical rides. I hopped right on bareback, no warm up in the round pen, and set her out to work. I read this wonderful article in Dressage Today that had some great exercises in it, so we worked on one of them (the simplest one) at the beginning. It was basically making 20-meter circles at A, B, and C, then changing direction down the diagonal and repeating the exercise. I got pretty much the best walk I've ever experienced on her, which was awesome and it's good to know she can actually walk like a normal horse, reaching down into the contact and marching forward instead of doing her slow meandering crawl.

Our trot work was not the best we've ever had, and she put up a lot of resistance whenever I tried to get her in a frame, so we focused more on keeping an even tempo instead. Later into our trot work I got a couple stretches of her starting to hold herself together more, but they never lasted long. Cantering was, in a word, awesome. I had the best left canter work to date today, and it felt amazing. She was calm and balanced and steady and it was awesome. We scrambled around the corners a bit, but towards the end she figured out that speeding up through the corners in fact made it harder to go through them and after that she settled down and was practically perfect.

We ended on a slow trot with a semi-loose rein. She thinks that once we canter, everything afterwards will be cantering too and gets really antsy when you want to walk or trot only, so we're working on decompressing. She was a little bracing at the beginning and I was half-halting almost every step, but she figured it out eventually and we had some nice cruise control moments.

 There are some more exercises I'm itching to try out but whenever I try to plan out a ride things go to crap and we never accomplish anything, so I'm going to try the go with the flow technique.

Bareback Mountain

Ahhhh I love my pony so much! Days like these are what I live for. I almost didn't get out to the barn today, but fate was in my favor and a car was available, so I sped off at 6:00 to ride before the sun was gone. Rush had been really frustrating the day before, to the point where I got off and did round pen work instead because she just wasn't paying attention to me and I didn't want things to escalate. Today I decided to start off in the round pen, and then do a bareback hack and see how it went.

Well first off let me say I'm really proud of her, because she has the change of direction thing down pat BOTH ways now, without me having to drill it into her some more. She's also balancing herself up a lot more and can canter like a normal horse in the round pen, instead of scrambling madly with legs flying everywhere trying to stay upright. She usually starts off fast after the transition and settles down within a stride or two. She had some trouble crossfiring to the left, but overall did really well balancing herself up. To the right she was perfect, as usual. One day we will balance those sides out.. one day..

Anywho, I hopped on bareback and hoped that I wouldn't make a fool of myself and end up in the dirt. I mean, I've ridden bareback before, but on her I've only walked around because her transitions are so jarring and her canter was the worst thing ever and I didn't want to subject myself to that. We started off doing a few walking laps of walk/halt transitions (oh, btw, she was in the D-ring today) which went really well. Then I took a deep breath and cued her for trot, and we kinda muddled around the ring figuring things out. The first few laps was me figuring out my balance, and then I started focusing on keeping my hands up and elbows elastic and really pushing her forward. We got some pretty decent trot work in; I think I was so focused on keeping myself on that I softened up and stopped nitpicking about things like where her head was and how fast we were going, and she started to trust my hands a little more.

Canter work.. was awesome. The transitions were a little icky, but they usually are bareback. Again, I was so focused on staying on (she's quite slippery!) that I stopped fussing over things like how fast we're going and just rode her forward into my contact. I think she has somewhat of an idea that I wasn't 100% secure on top of her and she made sure she didn't pull anything that would unseat me. We had some awesome work to the right, including some breaks that were my fault that she bounced back into the canter from as if they were nothing. Things started a little dicier to the left, but we figured things out and a really good rhythm going. I know what you're thinking. Rush, rhythm? Yes, it happened!

All in all I am over the moon about our ride, so much that I think I'm going to dedicate this week to bareback rides. 

Transitions

Not quite here.. but close

FINALLY a good ride! Wowza that was definitely needed. I put Rushie back in the pelham in anticipation of needing more leverage for our transition work, and it worked like a charm. We rode in the dressage ring and I used the letter markers to distance my transitions. We walked twice each direction, stopping at every letter. It took her a few times to figure out that the whole pulling back on the reins thing actually meant stop, and no, you can't ignore it, but after that she was stopping on a dime and it was lovely.

I started the trotwork on a circle at the top of the ring, stopping on the short side of the ring then proceeding to do a slow trot around the circle. I cannot stress how amazingly low key she was through all of this- usually transitions fire her up and stoke her fightin' attitude, but she was mellow and placid and it was so wonderful I just wanted to hug her all the time, forever and ever. After doing a couple circles each direction I let her trot around the ring a few times, giving her the option to frame up but not pushing it. She stretched down and worked into the frame a couple of times, but mostly stayed above it.

I'll admit, I was a little apprehensive to start the canter work. That's usually when everything goes to shit and the ride goes downhill. I started to the left, her bad direction. I would trot, cue for the canter, and let her canter either a) until I felt her start getting fast or b) until we cantered down one side of the ring, and then asked for a halt. Shout out to Rush, she had those halts DOWN. I was really proud/impressed. Then we did trot/halt transitions until she settled down and stopped trying to leap into the canter again, and I would cue for the canter again. She did really great with this and although she got amped up after the canter/halt transitions, she did settle down without blocking me out, which was great. We switched direction, went right (she was awesome this way) and I ended to the left with a nice full lap around the ring at the canter.

Focus

This week is dedicated to taking a whack at focus, something which Rush has a lot of- it's just not usually directed at me. For instance, the staring at herself in the mirror and forgetting to turn and almost falling on her face every. single. time. we go through that corner.

Two days ago we had another sloppy ride, because I decided hey maybe we should have some brakes! and she definitely did not agree with that. Cue instant drama and scrambling around and pretending like we have no idea what stop or turn means. This revelation was brought on when we attempted to canter, and picked up the wrong lead. This was, admittedly, my fault- I keep forgetting to set her up for it because I'm focusing on smoothing the transition, and since she's usually bending herself in the wrong direction, she picks up the wrong lead. What happened after was not my fault- her freaking out when I asked her to come back down to a trot, bracing against the bit, and taking off down the ring. There were some interesting maneuvers on my part to get her to stop.

So yeah, that ride was crap and we didn't really have brakes ever, even after lots of walk-trot transitions to get her paying attention (really it just amped her up :/) so I quit after a relatively not running off lap around the ring.

Yesterday I felt lazy and was not really up to fighting with her, so we did some round pen work instead. I worked a lot on engaging her attention and keeping her focused on me, which involved lots of changes of direction. She learned pretty quickly to turn facing me going to the right, but to the left there seems to be a lot of hesitation and stickiness even though she did it successfully and was praised for it. So we'll keep working on that. She started keying in on my body language pretty well walk/trot, but is still spacing once she gets to RUNFREE aka canter, so that also needs to be addressed. Today I'll ride, cause I've been a bad mom this week and have neglected her terribly, opting to stay inside and have the sniffles instead.

Fingers crossed for a good ride today! We're going to work on transitions again; I think I'll be putting her in the pelham for this because the D-ring was definitely not cutting it.