Growing up, I loved reading the comics in the Sunday paper, especially Family Circus . One of my favorite themes was when Billy was sent from point A to point B and instead of taking the most direct path, he wandered all over the neighborhood and looked at everything, before arriving at his final destination. Given a choice, John would also wander all over the neighborhood to look at everything when we go for trail rides. I try to let him ride on a loose rein, but honestly, on a few of our 25 mile rides last year I think we may have added an extra 1/2 mile in "wandering" steps. Shuffle left, shuffle right, veer off trail to look at that branch... This spring, as we do our long, slow conditioning rides (remarkably I have been able to keep these mostly at a walk) I am also concentrating on keeping John moving in a straight line (or straighter than he normally tracks). I use a lot of seat and legs so I can leave him on a loose rein, but just try and cut out some of the extra
I went through a phase, quite a few years ago now, where it seemed like every ride I was on, there were two or three people that needed help. These were competitive trail rides (CTR), not endurance, it was back when I still mostly rode CTR. I have friends who lost an entire ride because someone lost their horse, and they went off to try and find it. The horse was eventually found, but not until days later. On the first ride where I encountered people that needed help, I stopped once or twice for different people. A couple rides later, I realized that if I helped everyone who needed it, I might never get to ride my own horse. I remember saying to Megan, the friend I was riding with who wanted to stop that she could, but I was going to keep riding. Mind you, none of these were serious situations. A horse lost a shoe or hoof boot. Someone was adjusting tack. A bathroom stop. Some people say you should always stop because it may be your turn next. Whatever all these situations were, all
Years ago, I was at the Muckleratz CTR in Pennsylvania and went into the electric fence paddock (I unplugged it first) to tube some pre-loading electrolytes into my mare Secret. She’s not a huge fan of electrolytes (or anything in a tube, dewormer, etc.), but I didn’t think too much about it. The Muckleratz ride camp is a huge field and it's on a hill. They can fit a lot of horse trailers in there. We were at the top of one section of the hill, and there was a huge grassy section in the middle going down the hill, with more horse trailers at the bottom. Secret was insulted by the electrolyte tubing and ducked under the electric fence gate and ran through the ride camp field to the bottom of the hill. Once she got to the bottom of the hill, she turned around and ran back up the hill to our camp spot. This all happened in a really short period of time – I was heading out after her with a bucket of grain as she was running back up the hill. It happened so fast that I’m not sure anyon
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