First Outdoor Drive of the Year

Yesterday the weather was so glorious (near 80 degrees, sunshine, still
some snow in the ditches!), and since I was tired from a 3 hour trail
ride the day before, I hitched Quzqo up to the cart and we went for our
first outside drive of 2008!

I'd been driving him indoors while the outsides were too icy/muddy this
Spring, but things have finally dried out, and a peaceful warm Sunday
late afternoon is too perfect to pass up!

We started out in an empty pasture, just to warm up and get any bugs
out... considering his dramatic trail ride behavior last weekend, I
wasn't too sure what I'd be dealing with (though he was better behaved
on our ride Saturday). As usual, he did fine, and we did enough trotting
to get the edge off before heading out onto the pavement!

Not a ton of traffic, but an occasional car or truck whizzing by...the
horse didn't care, he did goggle at that cut-up tree in the ditch that
gave us grief the other weekend, but thanks to blinders, they were soon
out of sight and out of mind!

Got him trotting down the road, and he did perfect! Man, there is no
feeling like that, I'm sure I had a big ole' grin on my face!! We went
down a dirt side road and I trotted him up a lonnnnnng hill...fat boy
got a workout! My biggest problem was finding a spot wide enough for us
to turn around in, because ahead was a steep downhill, and I didn't want
to make him have to climb UP that hill on the way home. Turned around in
my farrier's ex-driveway, and headed back, and Coos KNEW we'd turned
around, so the pace was a bit quicker, LOL!

We trotted the last 1/2 mile or so, he was FLYING...roadster horse!! But
as soon as we reached the fence line of the barn, the little booger
slowed right down, and I had to keep after him to keep him trotting!
There were three driveways to the barn, and he tried to turn down each
and every one, and I kept steering him back onto the road until we got
to the fourth and farthest one, THEN could he turn onto the barn
property. No fooling that boy!

Got a little sweat on him, the breeching rubbed a clean spot in his fur,
but he just did SO good, I'm proud of my boy!!

When we were driving past the outdoor arena, Bob's daughter's
Now-New-Husband (used to be boyfriend), "Cowboy Brian", was in the round
pen w/some horse that had obviously not had a saddle on before...that
horse was crow-hopping and bucking and smashing into the panels and
galloping crazy, & Brian (whose name I found actually is RYAN, so I'll
call him that now) was kind of dodging the mayhem. Later in the barn I
heard him tell Bob he needs to sell tickets for when he actually does
ride that horse for the first time, LOL! I'd buy one, and lay a bet

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