A Trail Ride and a Picnic

Jeff had "reminded" me that I wanted to go on a trail ride and have a little picnic on top of the hill overlooking the creek. So we packed up the essential October picnic supplies (hot chocolate, cookies, fruit, and goldfish crackers) in the picnic basket and headed out to the barn. We decided to make it a very short trail ride so we could picnic before it got dark. We dropped off the picnic basket at the top of the hill and headed for the woods.

I still can't get Cody to walk down and back up the little dips in the trail. I start reminding him long before the hill that we're going to walk but when he gets to it he bites down on the bit and just runs. On the way back he ran all the way from the first big dip to the big tree before I got him to stop. On the way out of the woods he was set to head home but the plan was to go back to the top of the overlook for our picnic. Cody was not pleased with this idea and it took a few circles to get him to move forward in the right direction. My dressage saddle was slipping back so far on him, he was rewarded with not only a big patch of grass to graze in but I took the saddle off as well. We tied them to some trees and had our little picnic.

It was dark by the time we packed up to go home so I had to tack up Cody by feel. As soon as I have some extra money I'm going to find out how much it costs to have new billet straps put on my saddle. I cannot work with the ones on it right now. It took me three adjustments to get the saddle on right before I could mount without everything coming down on top of me. And Cody being more than ready to go home, did not appreciate the extra wait. I think Axel was acting pretty decent the whole ride, Jeff might argue otherwise but Axel is always an angel compared to Cody lately. So we rode back down the hill in the dark which was a new experience for me. It's a little scary actually. The horses knew the way and can probably see a lot better in the dark than we can so we made it back in one piece.

Tom had already fed the remaining horses so we fed Cody and Axel, shooed Beau out of the barn, and headed for home.

Oh I nearly forgot one thing ;) Jeff and I got engaged during our picnic!