The last time you rode a horse and what you did
Well, this is a little late/dated now, since I was in Connecticut for a wedding this weekend. So, while I will ride today, I will write about what Dee and I did on Thursday (I wrote this Friday, before my ride, and don't feel like updating to add in Friday's ride... it was good though).
I went pretty easy on her, since I'm just concerned with letting her chillax and settle in. I mean, I won't even be here this weekend, so I feel like there is no point in pushing her during her transition. When I got to the barn, she looked calm and happy, although she had begun the process of dragging her hay all over her stall. I got there about an hour after they came in, though, so I'm hoping she was just in the middle of eating. She got right back to it when I was finished, at any rate.
Similarly, when I put her in the cross-ties, she stood like a rock while I groomed her, and her bottom lip was flapping in the wind. Once I got her into the covered arena (I actually wanted to ride in the jump arena, which is bigger, but there was a lesson going on in there), she was mostly good. She got a little ramped up when another horse came in (argh, a new lesson, and they switched arenas on me!), and I didn't do too much more in that ring once they came in, because the rider was very much a beginner, and didn't have her steering 100% down. We just sort of trotted around avoiding her while she trotted, and when she took a break, I did a quick canter in each direction and called it a day. The best part? Totally quiet canter transitions! Go Deedles! To finish, we went for a little hack. This turned out to be a bit of a harrowing experience for me.
There is a small opening to the woods in the treeline -- it is VERY small, and I wouldn't have noticed it if I wasn't looking. Dee understandable thought I was going crazy asking her to walk in there at first. Once I thumped her with my leg, though, she marched in. Luckily, the trail was pretty nice once you got through the opening. However, my face got hit my about 10 spider webs as we walked, and when we came to the exit, I thought I was going to get peeled off of her by branches.
I honestly can't even tell you what was going on with the branches. The first one was REALLY low, and so I just hunkered down on Dee's neck, put an arm out in front of me, and yes, I'll admit it, closed my eyes to avoid branches in them. And then they just kept coming, and getting bigger. I'm glad Dee doesn't care about things like that, and calmly found her own way out, because I was blindly flailing at the branches to keep them away from my face the whole time (I have a weird fear of things coming near my eyes... the eye doctor hates me, and it's mutual). After what felt like ages of battling branches, but what was probably about 5 seconds, we emerged into the sunlight, walked back to the barn on a sunny, branch-free path, and called it a day.
Before we went into the woods, the BM indicated that she had to remove some branches in the woods. I will not be going back in there until that happens and the demon branches are gone.
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