We hit the jackpot on weather today: cool, clear, brilliant sun…and\u00a0 a boisterous strong wind out of the NW.\u00a0\u00a0 I tacked up Rags with a few changes to the gear: shortened the bridle one hole, shortened the throatlatch one hole, and added the braided rawhide roping rein to the halter.\u00a0 Most of the time it just lay on his neck and had no effect: its trigger snaps were hooked to the halter rings on each side of the halter.\u00a0 The bridle was only slightly harder to fit over his ears, and he actually seemed more comfortable with its being shorter…messed with the bit less.\u00a0 Mounting went well.\u00a0 He’s now used to walking over raised poles to start with, and today didn’t bonk one until the next to last and the last.\u00a0\u00a0 We started out into the Near Meadow; he was eager to move on, and I headed down the meadow to the west exist, the grassy ditch crossing.\u00a0 Trees along the ditch, and the picnic grove, partly shielded us from the wind until we came up from the ditch.\u00a0 It was blowing right in our faces, and Rags thought he’d rather turn and go somewhere else.\u00a0 We went up the west trail to the dry woods, then onto Center Walk, where the wind buffeted our right sides.<\/p>\n
Rags seemed happier with the wind on the side, but we needed to get all the way up to the north, so I turned onto Diagonal.\u00a0 Again Rags signaled that he thought maybe his rider should reconsider, but I insisted and we went on, then turned left for the dry creek crossing.\u00a0 Traffic noise from the highway to the north was LOUD by then; he wiggled his ears and wanted reassurance that it wasn’t getting closer.\u00a0 In a short distance we turned away from the fence and were on a winding path among Ashe junipers, until we got to the NW corner.\u00a0 There we turned left to parallel (in a wavy, scalloped sort of way) the west property line.\u00a0 R- had trimmed up that trail from “high enough for a pedestrian” to “high enough for a rider” and it was, as I’d always thought it would be, a very pleasant stretch of trail.\u00a0 It feels private and special.<\/p>\n
We emerged from that into the more open area that runs to the West Woods (Westbrook’s woods), where R- had opened a new trail so Rags would not have to walk on any rough rocks.\u00a0\u00a0 The trail we’d been on curved left, avoiding the main woods “shoulder,” and then curved right to head down to Westbrook and across it.\u00a0 We’d put quite a lot of rock there so we could take a vehicle through.\u00a0 The new trail opens inconspicuously on the right, just large enough for a horse and rider, and crosses dry Westbook in a gentle but definite dip.\u00a0\u00a0 Shortly before the dip, there’s a fallen tree that R- had left to make it look like a “real” trail–he’d trimmed branches back, but the trunk was slanted across, with a low end only 4-6 inches high, and the upper end quite a bit higher.\u00a0 Rags stopped and stared.\u00a0 I let him stare a moment and then said “You can make it; it’s just like the poles back home. Walk on,”\u00a0 and nudged him, and he did.\u00a0 I guided him to the low end and he stepped very carefully over it, and then went on down and across Westbrook, and powered up the rise on the other side.<\/p>\n
We emerged into the SW meadow, where Owl Pavilion is; he’s been there once before, when Richard was there.\u00a0 The SW meadow is now slowly filling in with small clumps of trees, mostly cedar elm, a few oaks.\u00a0 This is part of our management plan, because development has already reduced the woods habitats in the area from when we moved here.\u00a0 We followed the path R- had mowed between little thickets (great bird nest habitat) south to Owl, where Rags got a cookie, and then turned and came back.\u00a0 On the way back, I turned off the trail we’d come on, to the Fort Cedar\/Gully Trail, and after circling Fort Cedar we were headed back north and rode alongside the gully system.\u00a0\u00a0 Near the head of the gully system, a falcon flew up from one of the Ashe junipers to the north of us, and flew strongly south.\u00a0 I know a couple of falcons it *wasn’t* but since I caught only a glimpse of it zooming past, I can’t be sure of the size.\u00a0 Not a kestrel (too big, too dark) and not a gyrfalcon (out of range), but I’ve seen, for sure, though years ago, a merlin, and several peregrines, and one prairie falcon (the day after a storm blew through with a strong westerly wind.\u00a0 This is marginal range for them, but that one was unmistakable.)\u00a0 So merlin vs. peregrine, and I think it was bigger than a merlin.\u00a0 Always exciting to see any falcon.\u00a0 In the same area, a thicket of wild plums that looks “golden” when it blooms was just opening the flower buds.\u00a0 It looks golden because the flowers there have very short petals and the yellow stamens shadow the petals.<\/p>\n
At the head of the gully system, the Gully Trail turns back NE with some more interesting winding bits and comes out on the north trail\u00a0 to the creek crossing, just a little shy of it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rags had been going very well, so for much of this bit–gully system to creek crossing–I dropped the bridle reins and picked up the roping rein.\u00a0 The man I bought Rags from said he could be ridden in a halter and shank, but I hadn’t tried that yet.\u00a0 The trail was too twisty to tempt Rags to speed up, so I wanted to find out if he would stop and turn on cues from the halter reins.\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 Very reassuring to know.\u00a0 I alternated which cues I was using and he responded well; I dropped the halter reins before crossing the creek, and we got back on Diagonal and alternated walk and trot up to Center Walk…crossed Center Walk to the shortcut to Cloud Pavilion, then came home on the wide mowed area where we’d practiced side pass before.\u00a0 Part way down it, he wanted to stop and stare off to the right…then I spotted Tigger trotting back and forth and whinnying.\u00a0 Insisted Rags had to go on, because my stomach ache was coming back.<\/p>\n
And back we came, including a short trot partway up the New Meadow and a few things to do with poles before R- was in place.\u00a0 Dismounting not as bad as last time or as good as one of the times before.\u00a0 With the roaring coolish wind, Rags wasn’t wet (barely damp in\u00a0 one area.)\u00a0 He had covered about 2 miles (from my bike computer years ago) and done the homecoming polework in 35 minutes.\u00a0 GOOD pony.\u00a0 No problems with the bridle, but I think I’ll have that roping rein along and work him from the halter for a few minutes every ride for awhile.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s really handy to have a horse you can ride in a halter and some kind of rein.\u00a0 Besides his cookies, Rags gets a very small amount of regular horse feed pellets after any ride that I think is “long enough”…about 1\/8 of a pound.\u00a0\u00a0 Long enough includes both time and any harder work than just walking that’s included.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We hit the jackpot on weather today: cool, clear, brilliant sun…and\u00a0 a boisterous strong wind out of the NW.\u00a0\u00a0 I tacked up Rags with a few changes to the gear: shortened the bridle one hole, shortened the throatlatch one hole, and added the braided rawhide roping rein to the halter.\u00a0 Most of the time it Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,48,16],"tags":[52,49,17],"class_list":["post-1197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-80-acres","category-horses","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-80acres","tag-horses","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1200,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1197\/revisions\/1200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}