Practice Trail Ride

We didn't get a chance to practice the trailer ride but Anne and Steph came out on Wednesday to go for a ride anyways. We're still trying to find the right saddle for Cody but we might have come up with something that will suffice. He's deceivingly wide at the withers. Unfortunately the really nice Tex Tan did not fit him. Anne ended up riding him in the last saddle we tried and she said it was quite comfortable. Of course now there's Axel's saddle which is hard as a rock. So I'll probably end up borrowing a saddle for him for the trip. Shoulda tried the Tex Tan on him, I doubt it woulda fit though.

Steph rode Corey, Anne rode Cody, and I rode Axel. We made our way down the back hill to be greeted by firecrackers being thrown into a fire. The varied reactions of the horses was quite telling. I don't think Axel even noticed. Cody spooked but couldn't decide if he should get out of there or not, no one else was moving. Corey just stood at the top of the hill with his eyes bugged out. And Kiko and Kalani who had been following us turned to run, but Kiko decided to come back down the hill and try and figure out what that noise was.

The stretchy gate over the bridge had been left open so Tom came running to keep Kalani and Kiko from crossing. We ended up riding back up the hill with them following so we could lock them in the paddock and continue with our ride. We took a short tour of the little loop at the bottom of the hill and then went up to the clearing. Had a little canter that went very well for Axel, surprisingly, in the clearing. Cruised around the woods, went down the big hill on the opposite side and stood and chatted at the top of the overlook for a while. Corey and Cody were very patient with us standing there, Axel just wanted to eat and swat flies. Took the route through the woods back up the hill, nearly decapitated myself on a fallen tree, but we made it back in one piece.

Everyone was hanging around the paddock when we returned so we tied them all up and fed dinner and stood around and chatted a while longer before we all headed home.