Trails and Stuff

After our cross country ride on Wednesday, both girls got Thursday off and then I rode them both Friday. In the aftermath of my fall on Wednesday my butt still really hurts from where she whacked me with her leg, but there's no amazing bruise to show for it. There's just a tiny one. But it HURTS. Luckily it doesn't interfere with riding though.

Jetta was a NIGHTMARE. Oh my goodness, it was ridiculous. I'm not sure that there was anything positive about our ride, except for the walk-canter transitions because she was so hyper. I guess she was still in "go go go" mode from schooling cross country and she was mad that I didn't allow her to run.

We even had a buck/rear in the middle of our ride which was just SO naughty. With the exception of the rear on Wednesday, we've virtually eliminated that sort of naughtiness from our rides so she was being exceptionally awful. So basically that ride was a total scrap. She was just super amped up so everything was awful and I didn't even want to ride Queenie afterwards.

Luckily I sucked it up and had one of the best rides on Queenie ever. She just keeps getting better and better. I didn't want to ride her so I just got on bareback and with her rope halter. It took a couple minutes to agree on a form of communication with only one rein (she's still figuring out the whole neck reining thing so it wasn't really working for us in the halter). But we figured it out and walked and trotted around the arena in both directions even with the arena door open and the stallion hollering at Queenie.

Bonus of riding bareback when it's hot out = sweat makes you more sticky, lol.

Saturday was a trail ride day for Jetta. We went to the same place as last time since there's plenty of room to condition for our endurance ride. Jetta was very well behaved, for which I was greatfull because the park was super busy.

I knew it was going to busy since I was going on a weekend and the weather was beautiful, but there was a ginormous group doing a ride together plus other random riders. Luckily I didn't really run into anyone on my ride, save for one endurance rider. I kept running into him and after about the fourth time when I popped out of the forest and his horse spooked, we stopped and chatted and let the horses graze. We talked about different places to ride on the trails and some good rides that I should go to, then talked about our horses. He used to ride a TB in endurance and now has an Anglo-Arab. But the horse he was on was a little gray Arab. He commented that Jetta looked fit which made me happy, I hope that she won't have any problems with the 25 miles!

Today we did almost 11 miles in an hour and fourty minutes which I was happy with. We only walked in the areas that were a little more rocky, but I think we cantered less this time. Jetta was super happy just cruising at her massive trot. She was definitely a trotting Standardbred in her past life, lol. She was great about rating at the trot for the most part, even when she rolled into a canter I was able to bring her back to a trot with a little half halt.

We got back to the parking lot, untacked and let Jetta drink and sponged her off. I took her heart rate and she was at 48bpm which I was surprised at, since I barely let her walk on the way back to the trailer, maybe just the half mile before the parking lot. I trotted her out and took her heart rate again and it was still 48bpm so that was a good sign! I plan on doing one more long ride, hopefully closer to to 20 miles just to see how it goes on Wednesday, then we'll stick to dressage stuff until the ride. Can't wait!

I rode Queenie around a bit after we got back and rode over to the weigh station and found a little trail and creek. I was pretty sure we were trespassing obviously though it was unmarked so we just meandered in then hightailed it out, just in case. 

Overall, I'm just loving this amazingly beautiful weather we've been having though it makes studying very hard :)