Catching up again

I'm getting behind in my blogging again. Two weekends ago (April 12-13th), I went to Blackfoot on the Sunday with my neighbors (Cam and Dani)and a friend of theirs (Roy). I took Gypsy since she's the only one with the confidence for a long trail ride. Jake might do OK, but I may do more damage than good by taking him. I'll get there eventually with him, but he's extremely unconfident, so it's too soon too fast to push him on a trail ride. So good ol' Gypsy got to go.

In preparation, on Saturday I did some 7 games (transitions on line, yoyo, driving from zone 3, etc.) . She had trouble walking on the circle. First she would leave before I asked her to, so I did lots of yoyo to get her to wait for me. Then when she got going on the circle, she couldn't stay at the walk. I never really got a chance to ask her to go from a walk to a trot because she started at the trot! So I kept trying to slow her down by blocking zone 1, which only seemed to make her go faster. Finally after much rope wiggling, she slowed her trot and eventually walked. But then she wanted to stop and come in to me. So I asked her to keep going and she started trotting again. Rope wiggle, slower trot, rope wiggle, walk..... then trot, rope wiggle walk/stop and turn in. OK, slowwwwly ask to move around the circle again, she walked. Then trotted. I wiggled the rope, and she walked and licked her lips! Yay! She stayed at the walk for a full circle and I asked her to yield and come in. Good girl! We tried again in the other direction (to the right) and started it all over. It took longer to get her to slow to the right. She even caught herself going around a tree, but eventually figured out how to get untangled. Once I finally got her slowing to a walk to the right, I let her come in and we quit.

Next I tried the western saddle on her (since I wanted to use it on her at Blackfoot). I've tried it on all 3 of the others, but not on Gypsy yet, so I wanted to make sure it was shimmed right and the girth was set right, etc. Skittles was the last one to wear it, so I expected to use smaller shims on Gypsy and a longer girth. Turns out, the shims stayed the same (since I forgot that Skittles was under-shimmed). Actually, Gypsy could probably have used additional shimming too. Hmm. Then I took her for a trot down the subdivision road and back to see how she liked it. She seemed pretty happy with it. All set for Sunday!

The day was spectacular. The nicest of the year so far (24 degrees), but since the snow was still melting, the trails were pretty muddy. So my fancy horse and my fancy saddle got all muddy! :-) Oh well. Gypsy -- like always -- started out at a good clip. I wanted her to stay behind Cam's horse and not keep trying to take off down the trail. She kept pushing and trying to pass for quite a while, but eventually she settled in behind the lead horse. I didn't try to pull on her, just kept steering her back into Diesel's tail. Cam's fiance, Dani, was riding her 4-year old mare, Tommie (who's previous name was Madonna when she was boarding at our place). She's recently trained with a pretty good head on her shoulders, but still pretty green and unconfident. Poor Dani was dumped a few times when her horse spooked. Once because Dani herself startled her by adjusting her martingale and the second time was my fault. I was giving Dani a leg-up on her, but was paying more attention to Tommie than what I was doing with helping Dani. Consequently, I kind of fumbled her up on Tommie and Tommie wanted nothing to do with that and she kind of reared and jumped forward. We were about 2 km away from the lunch stop, so to help both Tommie and Dani come down off the adrenalin, we decided to walk the horses to the lunch stop. Cam and their friend (Roy) rode on to the lunch stop. Walking through that mud is hard work! I got a good workout (and wet feet), plus I got to work on keeping Gypsy at my shoulder instead of ahead or on top of me! It settled the horses, so it was worth it. I also discovered that my saddle bags were not evenly weighted. By the time we got to the lunch stop, the bags had pulled my saddle right over Gypsy's side. I was so busy working on keeping Gypsy at my shoulder I didn't notice the saddle slipping until we stopped. Maybe that might have had something to do with Gypsy trying to trot ahead of me!

Gypsy also got another lesson in patience while standing tied to the hitching post at lunch. Once upon a time I couldn't tie her to anything because she'd freak out and pull back all the time. It's extremely satisfying to see her past that and standing quietly!

Tommie had another objection to being mounted after lunch, but with some "friendly game" (jumping up and down beside her, foot in and out of the stirrup, etc) by Roy, eventually Dani was able to mount without incident. Crazy how well that Parelli stuff works, eh? Cam and Dani aren't Parelli folk, but they do trust Roy, who uses many of the same principles, so naturally it works!

The rest of the ride went really well. We passed quite a number of other riders along the way. One poor lady was hit in the face by her horse's head when he jerked back after getting too close to the horse in front and got a kick in the jaw. When we came across them, she was on her hands and knees on the ground with a bloody nose (I hope she didn't break it!), and the horse was bleeding a bit from the mouth. Apparently her horse is a show-jumper and this was his first trail ride. She was pretty resilient though and was more concerned about her horse. We gave her a ziploc and filled it with snow to ice her nose. We ran into her again back at the parking lot at the end of the ride. She seemed better, but I imagine she'll be pretty black and blue after that! Her horse looked better too.

Gypsy was pretty sweated up by the time we got back. Tough slogging through the mud all day (she's pretty out of shape after the winter off), 24 degrees and still lots of winter coat left. But she was relatively relaxed and settled compared to when we started. It really was a fantastic day. I was really pleased with how well Gypsy did. Can't wait until the next ride!