Saturday Ride

This photo is from several weeks ago but it kind of goes with today anyways.

It was a gorgeous morning so I made my way out to the barn. Tricia was going to meet me there after she finished doing some ground work with her crazy horse. While I waited I groomed Beau for a while and gave him a Betadine bath. He doesn't roll so he was still full of winter hair. I used the shedding blade on him as much as I could and the hair just came off in carpets. He still looks a bit worse for wear even after the bath, but he's better than before. He wasn't terribly excited with the hose, I suppose it was still a bit chilly. But he did keep himself occupied by eating the dandelions out of the yard. In the meantime Tom turned he herd out into the top half of the back pasture. There was a bit of bucking and running by Kalani. Cody trotted along behind and Axel brought up the rear and stopped as soon as he found a blade of grass. In hindsight we should have waited to turn them out until after our trail ride but what was done was done.

Tricia arrived and we went to retrieve Cody and Axel. Cody was all worked up having to be tied in the paddock while the rest of the herd was out grazing. Nothing I wasn't expecting of course. Then he got Axel worked up though, so they were both pawing and pacing and acting like general fools. It made Tricia feel better about her crazy horse though ;) We managed to groom and tack them up and walk them down past the first gate. I switched Cody back to a regular D ring snaffle. I just can't neck rein and if he's not going to listen to me in the first place I want to be able to direct rein and get some action in his mouth with both sides of the snaffle. At least that's the plan. After some discussion on which side of the hill Cody was going to stand on so I could mount, I ended up mounting on the off side just to make everyone's life easier. After we made it up the hill it looked like his saddle had slipped back pretty far, however, it was just at the edge of his shoulders. I reasoned that Cody doesn't even seem to notice that I'm riding him enough to notice his saddle wasn't quite right. Though any further up and it would have probably interfered with his shoulders so who knows, just an observation I made.

We made our way through the woods and managed to walk down the hills (using Axel's rear end as a wall). We did gallop up the one hill to the lookout point. One thing Cody is good at, walk to gallop transition. After a minor discussion on our way out of the woods we made our way back around the meadow at a nice canter. Well nice canter for Tricia and Axel, kind of an uncollected canter for me and Cody. On our way back around it started thundering and then raining. It wouldn't have been such a big deal but Tricia had left her trunk open with her computer and camera in it. We walked across the bridge and shut the gate. Normally we'd make sure to walk back up to the barn but we threw caution to the wind and "let'er buck" as it were. Cody quickly passed up Axel and galloped up the first part of the hill, topping it off with a few little bucks. He evened out and galloped the rest of the way with Axel behind. The next gate was shut so that was the end of our little run.

We dismounted and walked the rest of the way back to the barn being followed quickly by the rest of the herd. We untacked in the barn and gave the boys a couple apples. And by the time we were done with all that the rain had stopped. Tom had shut Tricia's trunk so we didn't have to rush back after all. Oh well. Any longer of a ride and Cody would have been beside him self with anxiety. I'm hoping that riding him for the next several weeks we'll work out a few issues. That will remain to be seen. It'll be fun seeing someone else ride Axel though, he looks so pretty these days.