Ride 23: After the Rain & Cold, A Good Ride

Sunday was clear and cold, but the body (mine) was not in shape to ride.  Today, Monday, was even prettier and somewhat warmer.  Rags had acquired some mud from the wet days (not wet enough to provide significant moisture but enough that a horse eager to scratch off loosening winter coat could get muddy areas.)  I worked on him some on Sunday, when I could stand up long enough, but on Monday morning worked him over during his morning hay.  Waited until around 11, when it had warmed up but was still quite cool (it was in the 20sF overnight) to put his tack on.

We started with a session of walking over raised poles.  He was very energetic and just wanted to get out and get it over with (my reading…his version might be different.)   Thus slam! bang! clunk! into pole after pole, knocking one completely out of its block and others just put out of place.  So we turned and went back through the line of raised poles.   And again.  By which time he’d figured out that rushing and banging into them wasn’t, after all, that much fun and actually walked over several without clobbering them.  (These are PVC poles, light, smooth, and slightly flexible, not the hard, raises-bruises, wood poles.)   Then he got to go out into the Near Meadow.  My plan was down the S. fence to Cloud and past it, north along the front of the creek woods, make a little loop over to the creek crossing but not cross it, and then up the north side just outside the fencerow.  I can see to check that there are no branches or trees down on the fence from there, because his back gives me a higher viewpoint and the trees (except oaks) are leafless.

We were about halfway to Center Walk, heading north along the outside of the creek woods when with a crackle of brush a deer–then another deer–bounded out of the woods a little ahead of us and went leap-running off to the north, then cut back into the woods.   Rags stopped short, head up, quivering.   I said “Deer!  Aren’t they pretty?  They’re running from us because they’re scared of us.  You’re fine, good boy.  I’ve got this.”  He took a deep breath and then let it out, then so did I.  We stood there until they’d disappeared again, and when I asked him to walk on, he did.   Didn’t seem worried until we got near the point at which they’d dived back into the woods.   He wanted to veer away from the woods, but I kept him on the trail.   No problems at all from there to the end of that trail, or turning to go look at the (dry) creek.

We were coming east on the north trail just on the field side of the fencerow trees and brush, and I was looking for the Black Vultures, expecting to see them higher up and watching from a tree–and ready to steady Rags past them if they flew out,  when a loud FLUP!FLUP!FLUP!FLUP! startled Rags (and me) and he whirled and then stopped, stiff.   The vultures had been on the ground–four of them–much closer to the west end of that trail than I’d expected, and they’d all taken off at once, loudly.  NOW they were perched in a tree, staring at us with obvious disapproval.   The Undertakers do not like being interrupted.  One of them opened and then closed its wings.  Rags was facing the field; I turned him back, but decided since they were now perched right next to the trail we were on, we would be polite and move over to the straight trail a few yards south of us, a narrower mowed path.   Rags was willing to walk onto that path and continue up to the Dry Woods, by which time we were farther from the View Corner, so I turned him left to talk to where the trails meet.  Almost immediately, something I never saw made a noise under an elbow bush just in front of us (could’ve been a rat, a rabbit, a snake; I never saw anything move, but something had.)  Rags stiffened a moment but then walked on; we turned around at the View Corner and then retraced the way along the Dry Woods.

Rags perked up considerably.  He knows very well that this trail connects with the west trail down to the Near Meadow, and that’s “almost home.”  But I wasn’t done yet.  When we got to the corner where Center Walk crosses the trail we were on…I turned him right.  “Whut??” he said, head swinging back left.  “That’s the way, right there.”   “Not this time,” I said.    “But I don’t WANT to,” said Rags, planting all four feet and trying to swing his head around.”  “Walk on.”  “NO.”   “WALK ON,” with emphasis from heels and voice.   “Oh, well, if you put it that way…” said Rags.  By the time we’d gone another ten yards, he’d perked up again (this is down slope, so easier) and all went well as we approached the next “crossroad”  at the creek woods.  Left turn there, put us going south.  No deer popped out of the woods, this time.  Left turn as we came out on the wide mowed area near Cloud Pavilion and he picked up the pace a little more, very energetic walk.  Then he slithered through a syncopated step or two into a jog-trot, very easy to ride sitting.  We were about 2/3 of the way to the end of that stretch; he started to go faster, but when I asked him to walk again, he did.  As we came nearer the Old Ditch, I switched to one hand on the reins, neck-reined him for the turn into  the grassy-dip crossing, then back up the Near Meadow, through the gate, down the N. horse lot past the walk pole layout, and between the poles of the 2 pole section, where I asked him to halt and then back up four steps.  “WHUT?  NOW??”  “Yes, it’s not much and it’s good for you.”  I got a grudging, crooked backward four steps, but then a calmer walk up to Richard, where I got off after some little difficulty.

He was just a bit damp under the saddle, not on his neck or shoulder (a lot under the girth) when I untacked him and he got his handful of pellets in his pan.  Tigger was Not Amused, but condescended to accept several cookies from me while I waited for Rags to finish the pellets.  That’s about 1/8 pound (I’d weighed them before).   Then I opened the gate for them.

Tomorrow the solar people are coming to hook the new panels into the system, R- has to vote in the primary (because his mail-in ballot didn’t come, grr) and take the car in for its inspection (about 20-something miles north.)   I hope he gets back in time for me to get another ride tomorrow, and the other days this week.  Spring weather’s always iffy.