We Did It!!!!

Lakota and I had our first trail ride! (not just a walk, but actual ride)!

Mandy and I loaded Lakota and Whinney up, and took them to the trail head about 3 miles away. Admittedly, I did need to walk Lakota for about an hour, she hadn't been off the property since late April. She was a little excited, and a little worried about different things. The cool thing about this horse, is that when she is worried, she just stops dead in her tracks and stares at whatever is worrying her. She doesn't bolt, spin, jig, or otherwise fuss. She just stops and stares. Once she stopped so fast it threw me forward a little bit. Mandy walked Whinney for a little bit, but she settled down very fast, so Mandy climbed aboard and had her first ever trail ride on her pony! She was very, very happy.

Lakota gets a little worried when we come upon a corner, and she couldn't see what is around the bend, or when she hears something she can't see. There were lots of houses, some joggers, a woman walking her horse in the woods, which got both the girls a little worked up, calling to him. We crossed a bridge (a few times). The first time elicited some snorting, and tiptoeing over it, but after that she plodded across with just a couple of snorts.

We crossed the road to the next section, went a little ways past the back of the industrial park. Lakota was a little worried about the music coming out of the woods (lol), then up ahead we heard a dog barking viciously. At that point, I decided I didn't feel like pushing my luck any further, so we walked just a little ways more then decided to turn around and head back.

Lakota was settling down nicely now, so I decided to climb aboard. She did very very well, though we had some very heavy reminders of what "whoa" means. She is VERY forward on the trail, wow! She has this amazing ground covering walk, and just moves on out. She offered to trot a few times, but since we havent' even worked on trot at home, and considering our whoa wasn't up to par, I decided it wasn't a good idea to allow it. She checked right back down to a walk though, which was good. Then we passed some pretty fat red Quarterhorses toward the end, and Lakota wanted to go say "hello", she is so social. And that was our day!