Weekend Update

My sister and I had a 4-day weekend that consisted of a lot of riding! I rode both horses each day (and yesterday, too) On the first day, the river was too high for Cole, but we crossed with the other horses and avoided the rain. I rode Cole in the ring (where he did very well for a change) and then took him on the hill. It started to rain, and he panicked. Very odd since he used to live outside.




Friday, I took Cole out with my sister’s horse and we worked on trotting together. We have a double problem with that since ranger likes to challenge horses to a race when we trot. Okay, so does Cruiser. We created the problem ourselves. What we did was trot very short distances and stop. They both caught on and settled down very nicely. Before we knew it, we were trotting calmly down the trail! It was great.



Saturday, my niece rode with us. We took all 3 horses out together for the first time. Cruiser never went out with Cole before, and he was so excited! He couldn’t take his eyes off of him. After he settled down, he was thrilled to walk with him. They are both capable of walking fast. We kept stopping to wait for Ranger to catch up. We stayed at a walk the whole ride.



Sunday, we took him up the the shwo ring area. The ride was successful, and we did a few short stretches of trotting. He was a little jumpy, and it really seemed like he was spooking at his shadow. It was early in the morning, and the shadows were longer than he has ever seen them.



I rode yesterday in the ring. He did spook a few times, but I got control of him right away and he settled quickly. We did a fair amount of trotting—enough that he wanted to stop on his own. After about a half hour, the coyotes started howling outside, and I decided it was time to quit.

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I rode Cruiser on the trail last night, and he was great, of course. He always is. Someday, Cole will be there, too.