Family Trail Ride Day

With the fam kinda rocking the whole horse riding thing, I figured what was the worst that could happen if we took the show on the road?  I picked Indian Spirit Springs, a lovely ranch that's open for people to come ride.  They're gunning to be an endurance event location but right now they're awesome with plenty of nice trails, great scenery, and thoughtful amenities.  Oh and they're in town and $10 a head for a half day.

Yspls.

We took the new trailer with all three slots filled with horses (and a pony or technically two) and headed out there.  I was still working on "horses as a family" thing for this trip so I decided I would ride in my reining saddle and forego the helmet.  Helmet was for "real" riding.  Naturally this made me feel good and panicky at the same time.  Another thing to note about taking 3 horses with 3 sets of tack and only one knowledgeable person - the knowledgeable person ends up doing a LOT of work.

But it was fine and we had everyone mounted and heading out in short order.  Natrually Piper was raring to go and I wasn't going to fight with her for four hours.  She led and I had to do circles around the group as she was in her "on a mission" walk from hell.  She wasn't trotting, so no laws of mine were being violated but ugh.  Not relaxing or enjoyable riding a working horse.

Most of the ride was uneventful.

About two hours in though, Piper had a "spook" at some deer.  It was really lame and completely out of boredom.  I ended up in a compromising position and started to scramble to stay on.  Then I recalled my horse is about 2 feet off the ground, I had a good amount of control and hold on the reins, and the ground was soft.  I let go.  Then it was on like donky kong.  She wanted to work, so we worked.  The.remaining.two.hours.

Not relaxing and I did look more than once with envy at my family on their calm boring horses, but it is what is is.   Piper is not a recreational sort of horse and once I gave her a task, she was fine.  Yay trailriding?