Ride 18: Reverse Circumnavigation of the West Grass

Today began with the Wells Solar team installing solar panels on the house roof.  It’s clear they know what they’re doing, just as it was year before last when they installed panels on the barn. No wasted movement, no wasted time.  We stayed out of their way.  Tigger spooked, of course, when the first one was on the house roof making New Noises.  Must Be Monsters.  However, he and Rags settled into to eating hay pretty quickly.

After they left, and we’d had a late lunch, I took Rags out for a ride, on a clear, beautiful, MUCH WARMER day, with a strong SW breeze.  Rags was unthrilled but not really resistant, and I was able to mount with *one swing* of my right leg for the first time in a long time.  A slowish swing, not yet “normal”, but not a struggled inch by inch dragging and short hitches of lift.    May it improve even more.  I was holding on to the fence’s top pipe on his off side and using the highest step of the mounting block.  Rags was eager to get going and get it all over with.  R- is a very slow walker now, so I have to make Rags do loops and things while R- walks to the gate to the north horse lot…and again while he walks across the north horse lot to the Near Meadow gate.   Once we were in the Near Meadow, I turned him left, we angled across the narrow end, and exited through the Old Ditch grassy dip, where I turned him *more* left to line out on the way to Cloud Pavilion.  Rags was not entirely happy about the deep dark shadows cast by the Ashe junipers scattered along, but he kept going, never shied, and we passed to the left of Cloud, then turned right onto the “Outside Creek Woods” trail, headed for the north fence.

Rags was not entirely thrilled at this prospect.  Tigger had been calling and calling.    Rags kept wanting to veer right, into the unmowed tallgrass, and a couple of times tried to break to trot (and once a lope,  but I said no, we were just going to walk today.   (I woke up stiff and sore this morning; I wanted an *easy* ride.)   I had to encourage him to go on, and he thought it would be good to turn onto Center Walk (when we came to it) or just loop back through the tall grass.  Nope, I said.   We went on and once he was on the terrace berm  of the lowest terrace, he spotted the big oak and the blue chairs under it and went right on forward.   When we got near the big oak, he wanted to stop for a cookie (having gotten a cookie there yesterday, going the other way) but I pushed him on until we were past the oak, headed back east just inside the fencerow trees.  As we rode closer to the Black Vulture nesting area, two of them took flight, away to the south but low, watching us, and a third took flight a little farther on.  I kept us moving steadily, did not look that direction, trying to signal “Not interested in any nests, birds, anything, just taking a walk.”  When we got to the Dry Woods, we turned SW (because the woods slant that way)  and Tigger walked faster…the section from the big oak nearer the creek to the Dry Woods trends up slope, with some interruptions from the old terracing and drainage channels.

Once we got past the corner of the Dry Woods, I could see Tigger below and in the distance (he was in the south horse lot, which is lower than the hump the Dry Woods are on.)   He was trotting back and forth and whinnying.  Rags wanted to hurry even more, but stayed in walk.  We came through the same gap in the ditch trees on the way back, again angled across the Near Meadow, and came into the north horse lot where (after some loops until R- got to our “getting off” spot)  and I dismounted.  “Seventeen minutes today,” said R-.  Faster than yesterday.

A fast walk is a good thing in a horse, as long as it isn’t hurried, always precursor to breaking to a faster gait, or uneven/unbalanced.   The walk is the foundation gait for canter and gallop: a horse with a really good walk can always develop a good canter and balanced gallop.  It doesn’t mean speed, but athleticism and natural rhythm.  A horse can have a good trot (rhythmic) and not have a good walk or canter.  A horse goes faster within a gait by one of two methods (or both)…increasing length of stride, and a faster rhythm…more strides per minute.  There are physiological limits into how long a stride an individual horse can develop (based on its bone structure, and the physics of pendulums but also training can help a horse increase toward its skeletal limit), and physiological limits on how fast a rhythm it can develop.   Shorter horses tend to take more and shorter steps…faster rhythm, shorter stride length.   Tall horses tend the opposite way.   Rags is a short horse and so his walk has a quick rhythm…but in spite of that, he takes longer strides than you might expect.

Riding his walk–riding it well (I’m getting there, not anywhere close to perfect yet)–means constant adaptation to what that energetic, quick walk does.   Therapeutic riding centers exist because sitting on a horse walking along moves the rider’s body in a way that mimics human walking, and has been known to restore the ability to walk in certain of those who do it.   It’s not like sitting in a car or train or plane, or even in a boat (where waves, not rhythmic legs, define the movement.  A freely walking horse’s back moves up, down, and side to side as the hind legs step forward, take the weight, and push back then pick up to move forward again.  The horse’s overall conformation (short back, long back, high-set neck, low-set neck,  heavy-built or light-built ) determines how much, on which axis, the movements take place.   The rider apparently sitting still in the saddle, in correct position but not stiff, can appear to “float”–but close observation shows that there’s  constant rhythmic flexion in the lower torso, to keep the rider’s shoulders and head steady.   Core, back, shoulders, neck…the entire spinal column and all supporting muscles are involved in keeping the unlikely combination of a vertically placed skeleton on top of a moving horizontal skeleton.  That’s why people come off an unaccustomed trail ride–at no pace faster than a walk–stiff and hobbling along at first.

I’d gotten past my first “returning to riding” stiffness quickly, but yesterday’s fast transit around the perimeter of the West Grass made me sore again…and today’s ride tired me more than I wanted to admit.  Tomorrow’s will probably do the same.  Both days I could feel the power Rags was putting into walking quickly as one hind leg, then the other, came under his back…as if someone were shoving the saddle up and forward, over and over.  It’s an off-center shove.  I enjoy it, but keeping myself in position is definitely exercise.  There’s the erect upper body to deal with, while flexing in the lower back and supporting the rib cage, and then the legs…quiet, not flopping around, heels level to down, firmly in the stirrups, shoulders relaxed enough to allow my hands to follow his mouth as his head moves up and down with every stride.  The better I ride, the easier it is for him to extend his stride and power up the slopes one way and control descent in the other.

But with his walking speed, lengthening the rides beyond 20-30 minutes is going to require more distance…and that’s going to take some time to work out.  Going west of the creekbed, to Owl Pavilion in the SW corner, will definitely test his willingness to go farther from Tigger and the barn, into places he’s never seen, where the sight lines are not open at all.   And I really need to get him hoof boots for the trail over the hump in the Dry Woods, since it’s got a lot more rock in it.   In the meantime, circles and loops at various points can extend the ride in smaller amounts, and also give me more chance to work on details he needs to learn.

But overall…this little guy is already proving to be good transportation…if he ends up as a 4 mph walk speed horse, on undulating ground, we could circumnavigate the local streets (just taking the outside ones)  in an hour, and downtown would be only 10-15 minutes away.  Handy.  And fun.  I think in another week or two I’ll be ready to try him on a short route on the street, up to the convenience store a couple of blocks away.   It would be fun to ride him to the post office to pick up the mail, which is farther.