June 26, 2011
Journey's first 10 mile solo ride
We had hoped to go to the park today, but when I got up this morning it was pouring down rain and had rained all night long. Hauling to go mudding just didn't appeal to me. LSEGH and I drove thirty minutes to get to a Walmart as I had some things I wanted to pick up. He is going to fix up a "make shift" wash rack for me. We won't have hot water, but the horses seem to enjoy the cold hose during hot weather anyway. So I purchased a new garden hose, and a wand with different water settings. LSEGH is going to put a clamp on the shed to hold the wand so I can have my hands free for sudsing, yay! Once I got home it had quit raining and I tried to call my daughter to see if she'd want to ride. No answer. So I thought what the heck, let's see how Journey does, she hasn't been ridden for a couple of days, and has had plenty of time to buddy up with Cree and Phebes. We saddled up, we went, and other than a feeble attempt at screaming for them once, all was well on that front. I did learn today that she startles at dogs rushing her and yapping. But the explosion was an attempt to roll-back to the left, and I just one reined her the direction she was going anyway which had her looking at my foot. Then it was over. We climbed a lot of hills, and slid down a lot of hills, traversed the edge of pre-flood stage creek, and rode down the blacktop road on the way back home. I can't believe how well she does, she is just so mentally solid. Wish somebody had clued me in on Appaloosa horses a long, long time ago. I still love Arabians, but in the steady department, this little Appy has it going on. I'm looking at Journey's conditioning and training through a totally different lense. Slow and steady, and stopping to smell the roses (literally) along the way. The plan is to develop the attributes of the trail horse first. Slowly increase mileage, and when all the gears are working well, then and only then will we start trotting. All said and done today we covered about 10 miles. We'll do a couple of short ones this week, and then next weekend if the weather cooperates we will shoot for 15 miles. ~ E.G.
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does she like to eat roses too? my horse loves them and it cracks me up - i'll be giving him a bath and he'll be keeping himself busy trimming my rosebushes. i wonder if race horses ever ate their roses?
ReplyDeleteappys are the horses i learned to ride on (shhh) at horse camp and i know why now.
Sounds like things are going well with Journey, hooray!
ReplyDeleteI just have to say that my black lab eats roses as well. When he took it in his mouth we thought it was a fluke and he would spit it out but he set it down and carefully ate every petal. Then again he loves fruit and veggies too. He also will carry a chicken egg around in his mouth all day, gently rolling it out of his mouth to guard it when he is lying down...funny guy.