Today me and a Maren decided to take our ponies on a nice, gentle trail ride. Backing up a bit, Tanta got the go-ahead to start the next part of her rehab!! Which is:
We just completed day 3 today. It’s so fun trotting her again!! Hehehe.
Anyways, We thought we’d just walk and then do Tanta’s trot sets on the flat parts of the trail. It was a really nice day… actually sorta cold, but there was sun and no rain so I’m not complaining.
But once we mounted up and headed out, we realized it was super windy. Ok… we started the ride off with a small twig falling out of a tree and landing on Tanta’s head… which startled her. So she was on high alert! So the tarp flapping around the back of our neighbors woodshed in the bushes caused a few spooks!! Then a big scary truck drove past us which freaked me out more than Tanta… who was unphased.
we turned down a side road, and got about 1/3 way along before Tanta stopped/started spooking at a rock. a rock!! This is when I realized Tanta was feeling veerrryyy fresh. Hahaha. She isn’t one to spook at stuff like that, unless she’s feeling hyper! So… she literally wouldn’t walk past the rock, and was skittering out in the middle of the road. We might have held up traffic. Maybe. I had to give her a big kick… that worked. After that I waved apologetically at the traffic and made Maren lead. Which was fine. Until we got near a horse hand walking in the opposite direction. Both Oliver and tanta most definitely saw the other horse… but… Oliver waited until we were pretty much right across (we were on opposite sides of the road) from this other horse before he threw in a massive spook, and landed with his from feet in the ditch, then hastily retreated from the ditch, almost leaving Maren in it. I thought he was going to *ditch* her. Get it!!! Hahaha… ok yeah that wasn’t that funny. MOVING ON!
we then got the the actual ‘trail’ part, and that went pretty well. Our horses were snorty/spooky, sure, but nobody ended up in ditches or on the ground so I call it a success.
After that we popped out onto another road, this one quite hilly. we walked down hill #1, and then started to trot up the next hill. Except Tanta spotted this really old falling apart truck on the side of the road, that has literally been there forever and decided it was going to eat her. Cue her spooking all the way across the road and almost into the ravine… ugh. I managed to kick her forward to avoid that disaster. Thank goodness these roads are pretty quiet!! The rest of that road went relatively well, other than a few minor spooks. After that both Oliver and Tanta seemed to have really calmed down, so we were just walking on a loose rein. Then this truck with a big trailer (bouncing EVERYWHERE, I might add) zoomed past us. Didn’t slow down at all (was going too fast to begin with) and didn’t go wide around us at all. So yeah, another spook… but not too bad. Luckily they are used to cars and trucks.
Right after that Ollie and Tanta relaxed back into the loose rein walking, lulling me and Maren into a false sense of security. We had just turned a sharp corner… one minute I was slowly plodding down the road on a loose rein, and the next I was plastered back as Tanta bolted down the road… luckily it didn’t take long to get both horses under control again… of course there were 5 cars all trying to drive by right at that moment. They were all really nice and pulled over as soon as they saw Tanta and Ollie bolting down the road… but… what? Tanta has never bolted before, and I had no idea what spooked her. I was in the front, so couldn’t see what Ollie had done. I asked Maren and apparently a car came around the bend behind us, causing Ollie to spook And land with all 4s in the ditch, and bolt forwards… and I’m assuming he startled Tanta into bolting… ha.
Thankfully at this point we were like 10’ from our driveway… and got home safely.
I really wish Maren had worn her helmet cam… it would have been really entertaining footage!!
Relaxing trail ride right? Hahaha
Canadian Dressage Pony 