First Real Trail Ride from the New Barn

 First Real Trail Ride from the New Barn

The next day was our first trail ride from the new barn.  I had planned to go with Ellen, but she thought the river was too high to cross.  She was going to leave Dante at the barn and meet me on the other side of the river to go for a walk with us.  There was no sign of Kevin, so I headed out by myself.

The new barn is just about as far south from the trail head as the old barn was far north.  The walk on the street was really no big deal.  That is, until the deer came flying out of a yard, across the street and into the woods.  That made Cole dance about.  It also woke him up to the fact that he was all by himself.  He started to neigh.

He neighed and neighed; all the way down the hill.  I could feel the tension in his body.  I asked him to trot a little to test his mood, and to my surprise, he trotted like a sane horse.

I knew he would settle down when he saw Ellen on the other side of the river, and I was right.  He marched over to her, and we walked together for a little while.  When he seemed really calm, I asked him to trot; and away we went.  He was back to his old self.  We trotted out to the next river crossing, turned around and headed back to meet Ellen.  It sure did feel wonderful; after all the stress of the last few days; to just trot out on the trail.

We walked back the the river crossing with Ellen.  Off in the distance, we thought we could hear Starry neighing.  Was it just in our heads, since we had been hearing him neighing so much the last few days?  No, how could it be?  We both heard it.

Then we heard him, again.  We looked and saw Kevin leading Starry down the hill on the other side.  Kevin started to yell something to us.  I couldn't hear what he said, but he had a panicked sound to his voice.  I knew that Starry (and Kevin) needed Cole as soon as possible.  Cole could do for Starry what Ellen did for him.

Starry was wired.  Kevin said that he tried to put the reins over his head, but they got caught on his ear--the kiss of death for Starry.  Even on a good day, that makes him very unreasonable.  When Kevin first bought him, he was extremely head shy.  Over time, that has gone away; except if the reins get caught on his ear--even on a good day--let alone a day that Starry was feeling emotional.

I hurried to get to Kevin.  The moment Cole caught up to him, Starry transformed into his old self.  Kevin wasn't going to ride because of Starry's mood, and he knew that Starry would have a fit when Cole passed him.  I told him I would ride down the hill with him.  

There is a mounting block at the bottom.  Kevin got on and was going to ride home with me.  I told him that I would go out on a short ride with him across the river.  We crossed and had a lovely ride.  Everything went just perfectly.  Kevin also commented on how good it felt to ride after the stressful weekend.

When we got back to the barn, Ellen was just about to start riding in the indoor arena.  She mostly just walked Dante around to get him used to it.  She then trotted a little and called it a day.  

I turned Cole out to roll in the round pen.  It wasn't long before he was ready to come in.  Some of our fellow boarders were sitting outside in the sun, talking.  Since our new barn is right down the street from the old one, we have known many of the people there for years.  Some of them even remember Cruiser, Ranger and Mingo.  Though they had seen Cole and Dante many times, they didn't know much about them.

As I was going by, I stopped Cole to chat with them.  Of course, Cole parked out.  He can look quite magnificent when he does.  They were oohing and ahhhing.   He realized there was an audience, so he started bowing.  The audience was delighted, so he did it again, and again.  The audience cheered.

I know that Cole will do tricks all day, so I figured I better get him out of there before I ran out of carrots.  Of course, Cole couldn't just walk away--he had to do his silly walk.  The audience loved it!  He did it a few more times before I could drag him away.  Now they know--Cole has been practicing to be a circus horse.

We turned Dante and Starry out to play together, and they had a wonderful time.  I think everything is going to work out at our new barn.