Since I enjoyed the ride so much yesterday I decided to do it again today.  I met a fellow Parelli student at the park this morning and we went out for a nice Christmas Eve trail ride.  We decided to use my two horses instead of one of mine and hers because mine have a lot more trail experience and we just wanted to have a nice relaxing ride to start the holiday out.  The ride went exactly as expected an I have posted a couple pics of our day!

My work decided to close early for the holiday and I was able to convince my boss to give me another hour off of that and with Lance being off all day he had the trailer hooked up and loaded ready to go on a much needed trail ride when I arrived home.

It was a pleasant ride with nothing of event happening....exactly the way a trail ride should be.  I was so proud of the horses because they have not been off the property since early October but they did not skip a beat.  I know I am probably humanizing but I swear the horses like to get out there once in awhile.

Tucker had an obsession with wanting to smell every pile of horse poop we came across.  It was therapy for me.

x-posted to fiesta831 

It's a sunny 47 degrees outside and the morning was screaming for some horse time.  We have to drive through our lawn to get our horse trailer out so unfortunately things were still too wet and muddy to get them out for a trail ride, but that's what pastures and riding rings are for.  So after a brief hike with the dogs we both put on our riding boots and headed to the barn.

Tucker and I started on the ground and fortunately that large puddle is still out there.  We never got all four feet in but I did get a nose, neck and two front feet.  We also started playing with pulling/dragging, I did not do much with this other than trailer the rope along behind letting him get used to the feel of having it touch him and around him. 

For much of our session Tucker seemed bored.  I tried spicing it up by using the puddle and the ropes but he had what I call "dead ears" much of the time.  They are not really pinned, but the are not forward and interested either.  I'm not sure how to interpret them but I frequently feel as though it is a boredom or "over it" expression.  Lance said he had a soft expression other than the lifeless ears. 

Things got interesting when Lance finished earlier than I did and took Freckles to the barn.  I completely lost Tucker's attention and we suddenly had issues moving forward in a straight line at anything other than the walk.  He would continually look her way and did not want to turn his body away from that direction.  It ended up extending our ride time considerably because I did not want to take him in until he relaxed.


Another noteworthy behavior was that Tucker was very bitey/nibbley today.  At one point when I was cinching him up he turned his head and wanted to put his mouth on me.  It was not a full blown aggressive bite but a slow turn as if to say "I would like to put my mouth and maybe even my teeth on you now".  Also at one point when we were riding and I had asked him to stop and just be still for a minute he turned his head around and put my boot in his mouth.  It was not a hard chomp, but also not a behavior I want to encourage.  I may need to do a little more research on how to resolve this.  I think it is a leadership challenge and dominant behavior but in more of a playful package than an all out take over.  He also wanted to nibble on the farrier while he was trimming Freckles' feet.  From Tucker's stall he could reach the farrier when he was working on the back hooves and sure enough he leaned his head over and wanted to put his mouth on him.  Fortunately I was able to intercept him first but it all kind of tied into the mouthy behavior from earlier.

I had a pretty good session with Tucker today.  I started on the ground and since we had an ice storm last night there was a large left over puddle in the riding ring.  We played with that a little bit but I did not get too focused on it because he is not confident walking through puddles of a certain size and I knew that would turn into a very long session if I did and we had dinner plans.

I hopped on for some bareback and kept things at an easy walk over and around the various objects in our ring.  He started something new today.  Anytime I would ask for a turn he would give me his head in complete lateral flexion and stop.  I was confused as to if this was poor communication on my part or a tactic to get out of work or a clear sign that he was ready for me to stop riding him.  I dropped the reins to make sure I was not confusing him by sending mixed signals.  I then focused on where I was looking and what my body was doing and asking, it got better, but the he continued to offer his head at inappropriate times.  We'll see how it goes next time....hopefully tomorrow.

It would be good if the puddle is still out there because I would like to play more with that and I would like to see if we can drag things: a cone, the hula hoop maybe a bucket.

Well the weather man predicted this would be an unusually cold and wet winter for North Carolina and so far Mother Nature is proving him right!

Unfortunately winter months eliminate my ability to play with the horses after work because of daylight savings time. This leaves me with the weekend days to get my horsey time in. I have been given brief doses that have been enough to keep me going, but I am longing for a decent chunk of time spent with Tucker.

I was supposed to go on a trail ride last weekend, unfortunately that got rained out. The sun did come out for a bit in the afternoon and I rushed outside to saddle Tucker up and take a few spins around the ring. I had some ride time last Sunday as well and then Tucker was treated to giving a pony ride to one of my friends' son.

I was hoping for the trail ride again this weekend however, it brought more rain :( It cleared up briefly this afternoon, however there has been so much rain that everything is a muddy mess. It's a good opportunity to play with mud puddles but not safe to do much else. I learned something interesting about Tucker though. Lance headed out before me and brought Freckles into the ring. When I got out there my horse was cantering (to my dread as I he slipped all over the place) along the muddy fence line in a kicking bucking fit. What was this?!?!?!?!?!? A bit of herd bound behavior, upset at being the one left behind, complaint about not being let in the barn when you thought it was feeding time. I'm not sure what the fit was about, but it was highly unusual behavior to say the least. He never has a problem leaving Freckles behind, but apparently he does not want her to go. Since his energy was already through the roof I decided to play quiet games on the ground out of sight of where Lance and Freckles were playing. At first he still acted distracted and kept trying to crane his neck around to see if he could get a look at them but after a few minutes he seemed to tune into me instead. He had a high energy about him the entire time we played so I tried to contrast that and keep him from exploding by being as calm as possible and making him play games he had to think through. We used the mud "river" that now runs through the pasture as a good obstacle to play with. Squeeze, yo-yo, driving till he would put all his feet through in a calm non avoiding way. I don't really think he is right brained about the mud, I think he just does not like it.

I'm so thankful to live with the horses. If we still boarded both this weekend and last we never would have had the few minutes to run out there and play with the horses we would have missed seeing them entirely. The investment of time would not have been worth the risk to get to the barn just to get rained out.