Today was our first trail ride and trailer ride with the new trailer. Yay!Saturday Tania (a friend I met at the last Parelli clinic who, like me, is looking for like-minded people to do horse stuff with) trailered her horse over to my place and we did some work on trailer loading and unloading. With Gypsy I was just trying to get her to wait in the trailer until I asked her to back out. With Tania's horse Jack, we worked on unloading using the tail-pull. It started raining pretty hard, so we kind of gave it up after an hour or so, came in for coffee and then decided to haul Jack to an indoor arena so Tania could do some more work with him there. I followed her to the arena and gave her a few suggestions here and there on a couple things she was working on. Although she didn't need much help. Jack is an awesome horse. Only 4 years old, and from what I can see - rock solid. Really well trained.
Saturday was more or less a bit of preparation for trailering and trail riding for today. Each time I worked with Gypsy loading in the trailer, she would get better and better. On Saturday we had her in the trailer with the door closed a few times, so I was pretty confident by the time we quit that I'd have no trouble loading Gypsy for the trail ride today.
And of course, she did great. I didn't use the sway bar (still haven't quite got her to move up enough to close the sway bar), but just let Gypsy have the whole trailer to find a comfortable position for herself. We drove to Blackfoot Provincial Rec Area, unloaded and got saddled up for the trail. We stayed at a walk the whole time which is a bit of a challenge for Gypsy. She has a lot of go! She did manage to stay at a walk most of the time, but on the way back she got a bit impatient. Tania helped me with Gypsy's patience by being patient herself while I had Gypsy stop and stand quietly several times on the way back. We aslo got off 
after another couple riders passed us and walked a bit. I walked and worked on keeping Gypsy behind me rather than pulling ahead. She walked through my swinging string a couple times, getting whacked on the face in the process, before she settled in behind my shoulder. Tania was also very patient while I mounted and remounted Gypsy a couple times on the trail as well. Gypsy didn't stand as quietly with me today as she usually does at home. So it was great to have someone not only understand why I had to dismount and remount, but also ENCOURAGE me to do it. As we got closer to the staging area, we made Gypsy walk behind Jack and each time Gypsy tried to sneak by, Tania swung her reins in front of her face to keep her back (much like I was doing while walking with Gypsy). It was a great ride. Besides the couple who passed us, we also encountered a couple of men in a wagon 
being pulled by some big draught horses. Both Jack and Gypsy were pretty curious about that big noisy thing and all the paraphanalia jangling around the two horses. The men driving the wagon were great. They stopped to talk and let our horses have a good look and then when they went on ahead, Tania and I followed them a bit to help our horses relax a bit more. Very cool!
after another couple riders passed us and walked a bit. I walked and worked on keeping Gypsy behind me rather than pulling ahead. She walked through my swinging string a couple times, getting whacked on the face in the process, before she settled in behind my shoulder. Tania was also very patient while I mounted and remounted Gypsy a couple times on the trail as well. Gypsy didn't stand as quietly with me today as she usually does at home. So it was great to have someone not only understand why I had to dismount and remount, but also ENCOURAGE me to do it. As we got closer to the staging area, we made Gypsy walk behind Jack and each time Gypsy tried to sneak by, Tania swung her reins in front of her face to keep her back (much like I was doing while walking with Gypsy). It was a great ride. Besides the couple who passed us, we also encountered a couple of men in a wagon 
being pulled by some big draught horses. Both Jack and Gypsy were pretty curious about that big noisy thing and all the paraphanalia jangling around the two horses. The men driving the wagon were great. They stopped to talk and let our horses have a good look and then when they went on ahead, Tania and I followed them a bit to help our horses relax a bit more. Very cool! A perfect start to the big wide world opening up to me now that I have a trailer! And it was a gorgeous day too! Couldn't have been more perfect. I'm still grinning.
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