Finally!! A day off of work so that I can ride!! And it's gorgeous outside!! And it's such a busy day today. Today marks the start of rifle hunting season, so I promptly kicked Keith out the door around 7 this morning to go do some hunting with his Dad. After he left, I played on my computer and then decided around 9:30 that it was time to go ride and play with my boys. So I grabbed all my stuff and some apples for the kids and headed out to my parents place.
Got there and visited with Mom for a bit and then headed out to go see my boys. They've been in the holding pen lately because it seems as though they've eaten all the grass that was in the pastures (that explains Dollar's fat belly. Lol). Grabbed both Dollar and Reno out of there and got them into the coral where Sue was. Sue actually stays in the barn during the night because the other horses chase him away from all the food and he doesn't know how to defend himself. So during the day, he gets turned out in the holding pen.
Once I got my boys out, I grabbed all of them, including Sue and brought them up to the barn. I was thinking of riding Reno in the pen, but then thought of just taking him on the road for a nice hack just so that he doesn't get ring sour like always. So I tied up Reno outside and brought Dollar and Sue in the barn. Fed Dollar some grain with his drugs and then got to getting Reno ready to ride. Luckily he wasn't that dirty, so I gave him a quick brush down and got to tacking him up (in Western unfortunately :-( ).
Ready for our ride
Once he was all tacked up, I got him out of the ring and hopped on and started our journey. I decided that we'd do a 2-mile hack today seeing as I didn't have a lot of time and I still wanted to play with Dollar yet. Our ride started out good, and he was fresh! Wait a minute...he is all the time. Never mind.... Anyways, we started out with his marching walk just going down the road. Of course, everything had to catch his attention, so all his attention wasn't on me, but I was fine with that. As long as he was comfortable, so was I.
As we continued down the road, I asked him for a jog to see how he would respond. And he went into a nice bouncy jog. And before any remarks, yes, he's always bouncy. Has been since we got him. For a QH, he has a lot of knee action.
On our hack
When we round the corner for the completion of the 1st mile, I let him stretch his legs out a bit and let him do his extended trot. Dad really hates it when I let him do that, but he feels so good and lets quite a bit of energy out of his system. So extended trot it was. And he felt GOOD!!! After a little bit of that, I brought him back down to a walk and then continued alternating between the walk and jog for the rest of the hack.
Except we had a little bit of a temper tantrum. While we were walking, I had said whoa asking him to stop and back up. Well he was having none of that. He didn't want to stop or back up. And seeing as I had quite a soft bit on him, he knew that I didn't have the leverage on him. Nor did I have spurs on him. So he put up a little bit of a fight. Once he back up like I asked him to. I made him walk forward a couple steps and repeat the whole thing again, just to get it into that thick skull of his. And he put up a fight again. Gees Reno, it's not rocket science!! Once we did this a couple times, he finally got it, did what I asked him to do, and then we went on our way. Thanks Reno!
Once we got home, I untacked him, put him away and got to grooming Dollar, who again, was full of mud. I didn't really have to ride him, so I winterized his tail instead. I got the idea from my friend Kelly who does this every winter to try to help the tails grow some more. You can find it here on how to do it. Once I got his tail all winterized, I had to take a picture of course....
Love the expression on his face. "Mom, what's dis???"
Yup, he looks cute. And I'll be able to find him in the dark. Lol. After I was done with his tail, I gave him more treats for being so good, and then turned him and Sue out. Hopefully I'll be able to get down there this coming weekend. With hunting season, we could be doing cut-up, but hopefully.
No comments:
Post a Comment