It was a beautiful morning. Before heading off to church yesterday I led Dude and Sandy down to the pasture for a couple hours of grazing. That's when I noticed that Sandy's pupil had come down in size enough for me to feel comfortable heading up the trail with him. I called a friend to see if she wanted to ride, and met both her and her sister in law at the trail head a couple hours later.
The trail head is just 1/2 mile from the house, and normally I put the horses in the trailer to haul down. Narrow road, lots of turns, no shoulder...not really good with young horses. But we'd had enough traffic passing while leading back and forth to the pasture this summer for me to feel pretty comfortable on a Sunday afternoon, so I started off on foot, leading Sandy along. Just past the neighbor's place I turned around and realized Rufus was following. I thought about bringing him home, but since I only had a few minutes before my friends were going to be there, I decided he'd just have to come along and learn to be a trail dog.
The trail head is just 1/2 mile from the house, and normally I put the horses in the trailer to haul down. Narrow road, lots of turns, no shoulder...not really good with young horses. But we'd had enough traffic passing while leading back and forth to the pasture this summer for me to feel pretty comfortable on a Sunday afternoon, so I started off on foot, leading Sandy along. Just past the neighbor's place I turned around and realized Rufus was following. I thought about bringing him home, but since I only had a few minutes before my friends were going to be there, I decided he'd just have to come along and learn to be a trail dog.
Sandy did great for his first day back on the trail. A little out of shape, perhaps, but no more than the appy mare that came along. In fact, she did a lot of huffing and puffing, while Sandy's breathing stayed pretty normal. He did sweat up a storm, though! We rode roughly 2 1/2 hours, and while he insisted he was very tired going up, once we headed back down he was amazingly spry once more.
Torri and Shari coming down the hill
We've made plans to meet up on Tuesday morning, providing Torri can get out of work. We're going to explore the trail to Ogallala! Stay tuned...
3 comments:
What fun! How did your "trail dog" do? I grew up with miles and miles of trails in my backyard so our dogs always came along. They LOVED being leash-less trail dogs; galloping along with the horses, soaking in every creek crossing, passing out cold when we got home!
Those are fun photos! A beautiful day for riding and great horses to ride. It just doesnt get any better than this.
Yay! Glad his eye is better, and I'm sure he'll shape up quickly! ;D
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