December Trail Ride

Sun Dec 17, 2006

Well, all our snow's gone, back to green grass and blue skies! That was a nice, short winter!

Unfortunately it also means the frozen dirt has turned into MUD, and even though Quzqo is in a new pasture, he now stands fetlock-deep in liquid mud for HOURS, because that's where the hay is. Can't win...it'll be a miracle if he doesn't develop scratches & thrush on all his feet and whatever else!!! (though his scratches/greasy heel on the one hind heel bulb has finally cleared up, thanks to days and days of betadine rinses!). Of course he's got around 20 acres of GRASS he could stand on, but no, we must camp in the soupy mud and stuff our face deep into the round bale and not move except our lips and jaws, scarfing wonderful hay for hours on end, LOL!

There'll be a cold front moving in mid-week, so hopefully that'll freeze that mud up. Hard to believe a week ago Friday I was floundering around in thigh-high snowbanks out there, today I had to put on my rain boots to slog through 6" deep mud!

Happily, Coos has NO new injuries or wounds...he's in better shape with the new herd of geldings than he was with the old herd of boys & girls. No chomps, no scrapes, no broken tails! LOL...that's one thing about a bunch of geldings...standing around and eating IS their favorite thing to do!

Ended up going on a trail ride this afternoon with another boarder. Too beautiful a day to pass up an opportunity, especially on the 16th of December in Michigan!! She'd only taken her young TWH mare out on a trail ride ONCE before, she'd been too terrified to go any more. I gotta laugh...she's SO sure that horse is going to spook and flip over and kill her or act crazy...I have NEVER seen that mare do ANYthing...even out in the pasture when the other mares are running apeshit, little "Annie" will just be standing there, watching the chaos. Sort of a TWH-Quzqo, LOL.

Heh...she had her all tacked up, but was "worried" that Annie was "wound up" so she had to "work with her" before we went for our ride...this, as the horse is standing there, with a big, soft eye, just looking like "eh, whatever". So she brought her up to the indoor arena, with her Parelli-inspired carrot stick (fiberglass rod) with a shopping bag tied to the end, and she proceeded to desensitize the mare by slowly and quietly rubbing her with the plastic bag. The mare seemed to enjoy it... Quzqo's eyes were bulging and his attention was riveted on them..."What the HELL is that!!!" (I have introduced him to plastic bags, and he didn't seem to care one way or the other)

Well, after all that "working" with the mare, she deemed it was safe to mount up, LOL. (can we say "insecure rider"? Sure we can!).

We had a pleasant ride...Coos did more spooking than the mare. We went around some nice wooded trails with steep hills and curves and gunfire and stopped at a mutual friends' house to say hello to their TB & mule. The mare did PERFECT in my opinion...she kept ending up out in front, boldly leading Coos down the trails, despite my friend's reservations, ha!

Long story short, it was a nice ride, nobody died, and my friend had her confidence GREATLY enhanced by the mare behaving so well. Coos did all right too, even marching through the scary water puddles that he wouldn't go near yesterday (probably trying to impress the girl-horse behind him!)