Yesterdays Ride

Its hard to find decent trails that I can ride to from my barn, but yesterday my friends, connie, mary, and I went managed about a 10 mile ride in 4 and a half hours. We did "The Hound Dog Trails"

I was on Rebel, Connie was on her pony Zulu, and Mary was on Dreamer. Connie and I are very experienced riders, Mary really wanted to go on a ride, and I think this was doozy for her.

The Hound dog trails are very simple, very flat and wide. Lots of good loping room.

The horses did great. Connie and I did a lot of loping, and tryed to get Mary to lope, which didn't quite work because she didn't feel like it. As a result Connie and I had to stop and wait a lot, which is good training for Rebel as he is really impatient and hard to stop. Ah, at one point there was a HUGE ditch. about 5 feet wide and a little deep, Connie and I tryed to talk our horses into going through it. No Dice. Mary finally gets off and leads Dreamer across, so we jumped off. and I threw the reins over Rebel's head, gave a little tug, then I jumped over the ditch and he followed. On the other side Connie had to help me mount up as the saddle was slipping but it was as tight as I could get it, while we were doing this Zulu took off at a jog, Mary was already on and after him, and Connie is yelling at me "Hurry Up, go catch Zulu" (Mary usually isn't able to catch them) So I get on and kick Rebel into high gear, man he has some power under him. I got him to slow down once I saw mary had a hold of Zulu's reins. I ponied him back to connie, then we realized there was nowhere really to go, so we set up to cross the ditch again.

What I love about Rebel is once he tries something once, he can do it again. He is brilliant. I was the only one who didn't have to get off and lead him back across. I was hoping he'd walk it, but he jumped that ditch. The ride home was very uneventful. A lot of stopping to wait since Mary wouldn't let dreamer lope. But a great ride.