It’s ben a productive week, with Strongbow really, really showing me what a great horse he is! His sixth birthday was on Cinco de Mayo and my birthday is a few days later, so we went out for a trail ride with Jen on the 9th, and I just could not catch a break. But this seems to have been a valuable experience for us, because I have started trusting him (or myself), which is allowing his to relax and enjoy the work!
The trail ride started with a lunge accompanied by chainsaws and horse-eating ladders in the background, topped off by a wood chipper. The barn is a working winery so these sounds aren’t highly unusual, but it’s not how I wanted to start our first trail ride in eons. Then we made it to the trail at to encounter a field trip of at least 20 children hiking on the trail above us, and we had to go around a four-foot “Road Work Ahead” sign that was gently waving in the wind. Around a corner we encountered a backhoe and the trail was completely closed, so we had to turn back…to the children who had caught up with us. Bow was not so sure about why they were all staring at him and we relied heavily on our buddy to walk past with some decorum. Then we made it back to the sign, which was just too much. Bow went a bit off-trail for some impromptu cross-country and wound up jumping out of a bush. And you know what? I didn’t have an anxiety attack! I laughed, and we continued on our trail! We encounter two snakes, mountain bikers, passed the children again, and took some trail Bow had never been on and it was great!
A few days later I decided to join an upcoming jumping group, and it seemed prudent to ride in my jump saddle at least once beforehand (I’ve been focusing on dressage lately) and while we were doing a great job getting in the way in the busy dressage arena, we also had a fantastic ride! Not a single spook! no scooting off, we cantered everything was great.
Yesterday tops it all off! We had our weekly dressage lesson, which up until yesterday had involved more convincing Bow to not spook at everything than actual riding, and we did a complete dressage lesson, walk, trot, canter, spiral in and out, some extensions, with no misbehaving! Progress!
It’s great when all of the baby-steps forward finally look like a giant leap! I want to hear about your progress!