The joys of trail riding!

The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Wait, there is no victory in trail riding! (At least not the way I do it.) Can you tell I'm watching the Olympics?

Went on a fun trail ride in Mac's old 'hood on Monday. We rode down to a lake and then actually to his old stompin' grounds when we mistakenly went through a gate that wasn't meant for us to go through. It did seem like he recognized where we were! We went by the house of his old owner, then into the pasture where he lived when I bought him. We had some nice trotting and cantering work until a rider on a pony who was in our group decided to pass us and so Mac had to indicate his displeasure with a bucking fit! To which I promptly yelled at him to "knock it off, you little shit!" (in front of an 11-year-old) and that was the end of our cantering for the day because I was NOT going to come off in a field in the middle of nowhere on the hard ground. I may have brought the level of fun down for the rest of the group but I've got to look out for number one first (in case you couldn't tell, I'm number one).

Had a fun trail ride today by ourselves where I rode in my western saddle and looped the reins over the horn and did 99% of the ride without using my reins. I like doing fun little challenges like that on trail rides. I steered with my legs or with pressure from the whip on his shoulder; we walked, trotted, and cantered, and I did the transitions without using my reins. Then we worked on walk-trot-walk-trot transitions for a while, leg yields at the trot, and finally walk-halt-walk-halt transitions. It was really fun!

Our next goal is another schooling show in a couple weeks. I think I'm going to do Training level test 1 and 2 instead of Intro C and Training 1. My goal next year is to do rated shows at Training level, so I might as well start working on those tests now.

It is HOT here, in case you were wondering!