Mental Health Day – or - Time to Trail Ride

I’ve had three rides on Copper after spraining my ankle. He had two weeks off over that time, so I’ve been taking it easy with him. He’s so unfit right now, and all the unexpected holidays certainly don’t help.

But the gentle rides have been good for Copper’s brain, and for getting him back into it. I love hill work for making him sweat! And it’s so great to get him really working from behind (in fact, I call it my dressage “hack”), as I always say – never underestimate the power of solid walk work!

We went on a group ride today with two ladies from our yards; they rode their horses, Faith (mare) and Darby (gelding).  What I found interesting was that Copper wanted to be the lead horse – in fact, had to be the lead horse!

The other two didn’t mind, they wanted to follow him, but it surprised me because Copper is definitely one of the lowest ranking horse in the herd, but the other more dominant horses just trailed along after him. And it wasn’t because he was more confident than they were - he was more spooky and look-y about new parts of the track and new bits of rubbish, but he just forged on and kept going.

I think it’s simply his competiveness. He wants to be first! The other two horses were also lot slower in pace than Copper, so of course we ended up 15-20 meters ahead of the others, and then we’d have to stop and wait.

But it was lots of fun, and a really lovely sunny day. I really enjoyed it and I think Copper did too. We don’t get to ride with others very often at all, so it’s super awesome to get out in a group and go for a ride in places I wouldn’t take Copper by myself. 

I really miss riding with my family – we all used to go down together and ride either taking turns with one horse, or taking turns with two. We did have three horses as well at various points over the years, but mostly two.

It’s so cool to have people to talk too, and swap horsey war stories with. I miss that a lot. It makes me even more grateful for the rare times I do get to ride out with others though.

See ya,

bonita