Friday, July 22, 2011

It's been a busy week...of riding

Yeah, we've been working it. Last Thursday we had one of the best full moon night rides. We got home, fed the horses, had a little dinner ourselves and left around 7 pm. I think the moon rose around 8-ish and we were out working on a few different things at our usuual riding area. As the sun set we headed for home and the moon was high enough to illuminate a very comfortable ride home. Temperatures were in the low 80's with a little breeze.

We got to bathe the horses in the moonlight and we were in the house by 9:30 sipping a glass of wine. A great way to end the day.

Ranae had Friday off and headed for the saddle shop to talk about her saddle. She came home and rode Dusty in my saddle.

Saturday she used my saddle again and I used hers. We took the advice of Rodney, the saddle shop owner, on where to position the saddle. Neither horses had any problems and we rode for about two hours.

Sunday we used our own saddles and rode for another two hours. We are getting efficient at working our exercises into the ride. Ranae will go off and work on something while I'll head in the other direction. I try to spend a good portion of the time on my riding, seat position, and balance. My hand movement/position has improved and my upper body is much quieter. Then I'll try to incorporate that into cueing Jessie to two-track, change leads, or serpentine. Then we get back together and just walk down the trail until something comes along we can play with, jump, or circle.

Monday evening I headed out alone and thankfully my little vaquero friend was no where to be found. We had a little dog problem and had to work our way through that. Jessie was very good out on the trail by herself.

Last night was the 5th ride in 8 days. As we headed out our gate and were standing in the street, a kid come up on his bike with his pit bull running along side. We know the guy by sight and he has a good handle on the dog. I think he sees us waiting for him and he stands up in the pedals to speed up and get past us. Jessie misinterpeted this as an attack and spun (great spin BTW) and turned to leave. I couldn't get a full one-rein on her becasue the asphalt was slippery and she felt really out of balance. The direction she was headed wasn't an escape, so I just held on and said "whoa". She realised there was no place to go and stopped. The guy rode past and we chased him for a bit before heading out for our ride. We were able to ride over an hour before it got dark and we got hungry.

We'll take Friday off and get after again on Saturday.

1 comment:

Tuff e Nuff said...

I long for the days when my kids are old enough I don't have to drag them with me to the barn and when the horses are in my backyard so I can post a similar post.

Glad you are getting some ride time in.