So let me explain.
But first, let me say: I've decided. I will call her Reina (pronounced "ray-na"). It means queen in Spanish. Fitting, no? And I can call her Rei ("ray") for short! Yay!
Okay. So back to the Best Trail Ride Ever. I went out to see Reina again yesterday. She was having her vet check and getting her coggins pulled. I arrived late (due to registering for classes... stupid, inconvenient school, interrupting my real life!), so I don't get to meet the vet, but she got a clean bill of health. Yesss! So her owner (let's call her Mary) says we can take a trail ride around her neighborhood; she lives near some woods, so we'll take the back roads (and when I say back roads, I mean barely-wide-enough-for-1.5-cars and underwater-when-there's-lots-of-rain kind of back roads) in a loop around the neighborhood. It's about three miles long. I say, yes! What better way to get a feel for a horse than to ride it more, right?
So then she informs me that Reina has never seen this place before. Okay, well, we're about to find out how she keeps her cool in unfamiliar territory. Oh, and there's a LOT of water from the rain. So some of the puddles are, well, more like small ponds. Horse-knee-deep water covering the entire road. Well, you only live once, right?
So we go out to tack up, and I get this bridle to put on her. It's western, which is the first confusing thing about it; it has a chin strap, but no nose strap, and the bit is one of those leverage bits, with too many places to attach things. Second confusing part: It's rope and it's all tangled, so I'm trying to figure out how it's supposed to look and hook together and I really just have no idea what I'm doing. Rei ended up suffering through me asking her to take the bit 2-3 times and putting the bridle on and back off twice. She actually put her head down for me to put the bit in her mouth and the bridle over her ears. Just enough, too! Not too far down to be annoying, but just far enough for me to reach easily. And she stood there, still and totally the picture of patience, while I fiddled. She didn't even make nasty faces. This was the first plus. She was a real trooper, and after all that, I got to snuggle her, too! Good girl!
So after that ordeal, we set off, Mary on her trusty steed of 32 years (he doesn't look it, and he's such a good boy!) and me on Reina. At first, herdbound-ness sets in: we're leaving one of the herd members behind, and he hates that, and our mounts don't like it too much either. However, they soon get over themselves and we're slowly trotting down the road. When suddenly....
CAR!!!
So we scoot over and the car passes. Reina doesn't even give it a second glance. Good girl!
So then we veer off and start to head into the woods. We pass various houses, some with very scary-looking, bright fencing. We pass a little shiny Christmas tree up on a post. We pass fallen trees, children playing with shiny, noisy toys, an old construction site or two (complete with tarp housing and a crane or something), a person in a wheelchair revving down the road towards us... and she never spooks! Not once. Her ears are up, she's going forward, and she's not caring! She's looking, but she's not freaking out. Good horse!!
So at first, I mistook her jogging, ears-pricked "OMG let's go!" boogie dancing underneath me for borderline spookiness. It took me about 1/3 of the trail to realize that this isn't right: she's just excited, and energetic! So once I start to trust her, I let her move out and we canter. Just a little bit, though. She comes to a stop when we hit the children making noise and doing crazy things she can't see or understand, and wait for her old buddy to catch up. We walk on with some jigging and arguing about which direction we want to go, but I already said she has steering issues. She does. She was nervous, and that made them worse. But still no spooking. Very levelheaded... just stubborn. Cool! Stubborn I can deal with.
So we move on and she still wants to go. Mary says she's really fun to gallop. I take this as an invitation. Whether I had a death wish or just hadn't had an adrenaline rush in too long, I decide to go for it. So I throw my reins away (which were loose to begin with, but I know she can feel the difference), lean forward, and say "okay, let's go!!" and with a little nudging, she does! And we're FLYING down this back road track, like woah! So fast one of my eyes tears up a little. SO FUN. And then, maybe 30 seconds - 1 minute later, I realize that I'm galloping in the woods on a horse I barely know who happens to be a Thoroughbred with someone I barely know far away from home. So I'm like, okay. Better not push my luck. And even though I'm grinning from ear to ear and she feels controllable, I ask her to stop. She tosses her head a bit, slows, but clearly says "but I don't want to stop!" I insist. She says fine and stops. She's great at stopping, but needs work on transitions. Note to self. She kinda hop-skipped. But she listened. Good girl!
So Mary catches up on her horse and we continue, with Rei jigging underneath me because she was excited about her gallop. Then... we come to a puddle. And I use the term puddle loosely. It was huge. And deep. And took up the whole dang road.
Mary calls up, "Hey, do you want me to go first?" because by this time, Reina wasn't scared anymore and had no trouble leading the pack. (My kinda mare! ;) ) I said "no, let's just see what she does!" because by this time I was starting to have faith in her sanity. So we walk up to the "puddle" and I pretend I don't really see it. She stops. Looks at it. I wiggle and think "forward!" She obliges, steps right on in like it's nothing, and isn't even dainty about it! So we slosh through the first of many "puddles," leading the way.
The last half of the trail she settles in to a nice swinging walk and stretches her head and neck out more, and relaxes into the trail ride. She's still looking around, but she's no longer "on edge" or wanting to take off. (Not that I felt like she was going to bolt; just that she was a lot more energetic and wanting to gogogogogo at the beginning!) She started to hit her stride, and she was leading and walking and taking in the sights and nothing was a big deal at all. She started once, and by started I mean stopped and kinda did that horsey double-take "OMG what's THAT!?", but once she stopped I just told her to walk on and she did, and so she got lots of pets for that.
Mary and I went out of our way to take the horses over a ditch off to the side, too. Just to see what Reina would do. She didn't even bat an eyelash; she just went! And there was a giant unseen hole in one of the puddles, too; she didn't bat an eyelash at that either. It surprised us both, but neither of us fell and I sat back and we got into the groove. She trotted out of the puddle just to keep us going, but slowed to a walk and walked through the next puddle totally fine. She's very unflappable. You wouldn't believe it if you looked at her, because she's always looking and curious and energetic and up; but she's not spooky. It's a fault of mine that I always tend to think the more energy, the more spook. I know it's not true, but it feels that way sometimes. But Reina... yesterday, she proved to me that this was certainly not the case - at least with her. It's fabulous to ride a horse with a personality, drive, and energy, without all the baggage of the spooking!
So when we rounded the course towards Mary's place, Reina saw "home" and the horse left there calling. She didn't take off. I didn't even need to pick up the reins any; she got some more "oomph" in her step, but that was all. That was great, too!
All in all it was a great day. When I got off, I was like, okay. I found my horse. She's so... sane. And smart. I'm positive that she's going to be a complete joy to work with!
And... she likes me. Mary said so. And Reina said so herself. When I was standing on the other side of the pen, talking to Mary about something, she walked over just to nudge me and get some pets. It was adorable. Then she walked back to where she was before.
So here are a few pictures of Rei to hold you guys over. I took them so I could have some "befores", and also so that I could ask for conformation critiques. I know she's skinny; this is the first thing I'm going to take care of when she comes home. She's also getting her tootsies trimmed before she comes home with me. And... I'm going to groom the crap out of her. She needs some currying something fierce, and some mane and tail detangler. She's going to be one gorgeous horse when I'm done with her, though!!
Told you she had a pretty, baby doll face!!
Awww. Hi, sweetness!
So I was right when I had a hunch that she would be a great horse. She is everything I'm looking for. I just have to work on the turning; and that might be solved pretty easily by getting rid of that giant bit in her mouth, too. We shall see. :)
And yes, I know, some of her fabulousness may be due to having a sane trail partner and the stopping might be due to the giant bit. But I know horses who run through and evade bits in general; at least she listens. And if she runs through my riding halter after I've retrained her to it, well, I can always upgrade to a snaffle if I must. But I'm going to try, first. And about the partner... I'm sure it helped, but honestly, no matter how sane the partner horse, if she was going to freak out, she would have freaked out. I'm very proud of her.
I found my new partner, and I can't wait to get her home and start spending time with her!! :D Her coggins will be back in 7-10 days, so once that happens, one of the owners of the barn I'll be boarding at and I will be driving his truck and trailer up there to get her. I. Can't. Wait!
No comments:
Post a Comment