September

Most of September was filled with gorgeous weather and great riding. Sure, it was a little warm for horses with their winter coats, but at least we stayed dry. That ended last weekend, when we went into monsoon season. Of course, we got caught in the rain, again. It was a bad one, and my boots were wet for days…

We had two long weekends this month. On one of the days, we took Mingo out with Kevin’s horse, Starry and a longer ride than we typically go with them. They are both such slow horses that it never occurred to us before, but since we were off from work, we had a lot of time. We had so much fun on our ride.

Ellen has been working with Starry on his canter whenever she gets a chance. (Kevin’s back bothers him when he canters, so he seldom does it.) The trail we took that day has many good places to canter, so we took advantage of it. We put Starry in the lead and put a lot of space between the two horses so Mingo wouldn’t challenge him. At first, he seemed confused with the whole process. She did a number of sloppy transitions, and then he didn’t go very far before coming down to a trot. She stopped and let us catch up with them, and we took a little walk break.

Starry was excited from the cantering. His whole attitude changed. Ellen thought it might be a good time to try again. He understood perfectly this time and went right into the canter. He still had trouble with duration, though.

Later, on the way home, we were trotting, and Starry wasn’t paying attention. He slowed down to a walk and Mingo got too far ahead. Ellen asked him to trot on, and he demonstrated a perfect canter transition. Of course, she didn’t let him work on duration, this time, and brought him back down to a trot, but it shows that he may have learned his lesson.

We enjoyed our ride together so much, that we already asked if we could have Starry back for our next long weekend. Kevin agreed, so now we just have to hope that the rain will stop by then!