Friday, October 09, 2009

Adventure

Cody poses with his boots and pastern wraps before dumping me off between the corn fields. Cody + dusk + canter + deer = Elise standing next to the horse.


I think it made it up to a whopping 48F today but it was sunny and not raining so a trip to the barn afterwork was in order. Cody had his extra food and some MSM and Axel had his MSM. I scrubbed the mud off of Cody and cleaned up his feet. B made it out since her trail ride was canceled on Saturday so we got everyone tacked up to go for a canter between the corn fields. I decided to put Cody's boots on just in case it was too wet to stay in the grass so this time I tried out the pastern wraps to see if they would snug up the boots a bit and I think they did the trick.

Cody was reluctant as ever to leave the barn so that took us a bit more time than it should have. The first part of the ditch was pretty wet and Diva hates wet and mud. It seemed to be a bit drier when we got to the spot between the fields so we went for it. We walked for a while, well Diva walked and Cody lagged behind then fought with me over catching up and kept weaving back and forth in an attempt to go back to the barn.

We decided to canter for a bit to hopefully wake up Cody a bit. He took off like a rocket when I asked him to change gaits but he settled in fairly quickly. After a little bit of cantering all of a sudden I was standing next to the horse instead of sitting on his back. Something spooked him and he spun around to the right and I more or less dismounted on that same side. I landed on my feet and managed to keep the reins in my hand so he didn't run off. Had I let go I'm pretty sure he would have ended up back at the barn and I would have had a bit of a walk. I'm not sure if I would call it a fall even, it was pretty controlled and to help matters I landed on the upside of a little hill so that could be why I was still standing.

Turns out the horses saw a deer and decided it was there to eat them. Diva's not horribly spooky but she was nervous enough and doesn't like walking in water or mud and Cody was nervous and they were feeding off each other pretty well. So we decided to walk forward for awhile and then turn around. Cody decided to walk backward about 30 feet before we could finally walk forward and meet up where Diva was waiting. Then we circled around and headed for home. By this time it was pretty much dark and it got cold so heading home was more than fine with me.

Axel was upset because J and J fed everyone but him as they were waiting for Cody to get back. He didn't even knicker at me when I put Cody back in the pasture. I don't think he holds grudges though so we should be fine next time I get out there ;)

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