Riding on the road

It's been a while.  Life has gotten pretty busy for me, and it's been a good busy.  I'm getting ready to go camping this week out in Decatur to the grasslands.  It is so pretty out there.  I'm going as part of a large group, and I will be taking care of the 9 horses we are bringing.  Of course, this means I'm bringing my own horse.  I have been working with Rachel under saddle to make sure she's good to go for this.  She's doing very well, and I think this trip will be good for her.  I've never gone camping with a horse before, so this will be a first for me.  Luckily, we are bringing panels with us for stalls, and the campsites have big poles concreted int he ground to make picket lines out of, so I don't think we'll have any problems.

Tonight, I figured I'd work the girls since I'll be gone for a week.  I went over to my friend Pat's house and made use of his wagon.  The girls hitched up with no problems and we were off.  I did a few laps in a pasture first to wear that initial edge off them.  In the pasture, Rachel had her head straight forward, ears back, and was a teamsters dream.  Pam was a little flighty and would go from getting into the pull, to looking around, and hanging out a step behind Rachel.  Nothing too bad.  After we did laps in the pasture, we decided to take them out on the open road and see how they did.

It's really interesting to me how horse dynamics work.  Once on the road, the confident, ever listening Rachel became shy and cautious.  She was stepping slow and I was constantly getting on her to step into the pull.  She also had a problem keeping her ears back towards me.  Pam on the other hand, reversed as well.  Pam had no problem moving forward and listening to commands.  She was pulling the majority of the load.  As this was their first time on the road, I didn't hold too high of standards on their performance.  You can tell that they need road miles on them though.  They both kept looking side to side and all over the place.  This made it VERY hard to keep my line tension right.  It was a little annoying to have to adjust line tension as much as I did, but since this was a first, I was okay with it.

Really the only overly cautious event happened when we crossed a creek.  Rachel got really slow and had to be coaxed over it.  Other than that, they had no problems with litter, passing cars, barking dogs, or weed eaters.  I was very happy about that.

It was a fun night and I am so happy to have a friend like Pat.  He is real knowledgeable and just having him to talk with while driving is great.  I find myself learning from his experience and I really value that.

In other news, the riding group I am a member of has asked me to put on a driving clinic in July.  I'm pretty excited about it.  I enjoy teaching people about this stuff.  I'm by no means a guy who knows it all, but I know what I've learned, and I'm happy to share what has worked (or has not) for me.  I just hope we can do it in a covered arena.  July is HOT HOT HOT!!!

I'll be gone all this week camping, but I should do an update next weekend on how Camping with Rachel went.  If all goes well, she'll come home a wonderful riding horse!  :)