palace of winds

Huge milestones for the Poe-nay: Sunday we went down the road with some buddies, and Monday all alone! He was a total superstar, especially on Sunday. He marched right out in the lead, alert but not freaked. Monday we went further than we had the day before, and he did a lot more tip-toeing without his buddies for back-up. We had a couple sticky moments checking out some new horses and a guy with a ladder, and when two kids came flying toward us on bikes. Bikes are a big scary for a lot of horses. Luckily the kids were very sweet; they noticed he was freaked and stopped a bit away from us. I hopped off (he was thinking about exiting stage right, and I didn’t want to let it get to that point), and coaxed him over to sniff the bikes. He never totally relaxed with them, but he was very brave, so I thanked the kids and continued on home. All said, I’m very proud of my little dude.

Okay — I started writing this post yesterday (Wednesday), but now I have more proud-of-my-pony to share: Yesterday we rode out again (with two others down to the culdesac, and five others up to the top of the hill), and he was perfect. There’s a fairly busy state trail (the Luce Line) that crosses our dirt road, midway between the barn and the main road. It’s very pretty, winding through forest, orchard, next to fields, over bridges, past the llamas… Because of the trees at this particular intersection, the visibility isn’t so good until you’re right up next to it. We were walking next to Dan & Liz in the lead, and just as we came up to the trail crossing, someone came zooming up on a bike. He was very nice and slowed down as soon as he spotted us, but we had to either hurry on or stop directly in front of his path to let him go by. Since we had four others behind us we stopped, and I prayed my pony wouldn’t come unglued with a scary wheely monster passing right by his nose.

And honestly, I thought at first he hadn’t seen it. Surely he hadn’t noticed it yet, because he was just standing there, totally chill. I was ready for him to spot it any second and go flying backwards — but he never did. I don’t know if it’s because his buddy Dan couldn’t've cared less about it, or because it was crossing his path instead of coming at him, or if he figured out bikes don’t bite. Whatever the reason, he looked at it and just didn’t care one bit. Horses, go figure.

We headed back to the indoor arena after our short but highly successful jaunt, just for a little trotwork and a brief canter each direction. I also wanted to make sure he was more settled about the open door (we had a big turn-and-scoot away from it before the road hack, when he caught sight of Riley coming down from the barn, and afterwards a bad case of bulgy-shoulder-itis). He was lovely — very responsive and working beautifully over his back. We had a stellar walk-trot transition: he stayed quiet, steady in the bridle, head down, and stepped right into it. The canter work was less good, but not horrible. We finished up by working on getting into the far right corner, which has become a bit of an issue in the last week; it’s not fixed, but we’re getting there!

You know, I’d originally planned to write about the instructor dilemma I’m having, but I think I’m going to leave it for another post. The sun is shining, my horse is awesome, and today I’m just feeling pretty darn good about it all.