Today's ride, Thursday, was a good ride. I love it when my horse does good and she has done good for the last 2 rides. I went out with a friend - who rode Sky. Yesterday my friend saw a mountain lion at the top of Beginners Hill...she was there in the afternoon. I was there that morning and saw nothing...but I did notice that it was very quiet and I thought that was unusual-don't know if the 2 are connected. Anyway today we stayed away from Beginners Hill and went all the way thru the cow pastures to the KBB Hills. I wanted to try some more separation.
On the way there we saw 2 beautiful bucks, 4 points on each antler, still in velvet. They didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave the area. I could sense that something was up ahead on the trail and Zoe did too-her ears were different. So I made some noise, didn't want to catch something unawares and have them jump out in front of me. So as we rounded a corner going uphill, there they were. The horses didn't seem to mind them either. They stayed around so long that I could have gotten a good picture...but I didn't get to it.
The horses did great with the separation. We only did it at a walk and only 2 times. At the top of one of the hills where we met up again, we met up with a runner-one of the vets from work. It was nice to talk to her for a while-about 30 minutes. She and I are going to met up and go riding sometime. She was out checking out the area by running. She seemed to be okay with her direction and she separated from us. We did another separation only this time it was different. My friend was unsure of her direction on her trail so she backtracked and came up the trail I came up on. It was okay...it was still a good separation practice. But she did take longer to get up the hill to us. In the meantime Zoe did a good job of just standing and waiting. She didn't get upset or impatient. I was proud of her. So together we went back down the hill and got to have my friend lead the way up the hill so that she could be sure of herself the next time we do this. I tend to take things slowly with my horse. I've seen too many people get into trouble trying to do things too fast...skip steps. If I can think of a way to break something down into steps, do the steps, then eventually I will get the task accomplished. So today we walked for separation. Next time we will trot some. These are great hills to get this done. When my friend and I were separated she could not hear the bells on my saddle....so I don't know how much good the bells do. Animals hear better than we do so maybe they are doing some good to warn the wildlife that we are coming. However the last 2 days they didn't worry the deer any....they just stop and stare at us.
We were on the main road before heading down to the cow pastures when we met up with the vet again. She had parked her truck across the street from FLEC and had entered the forest thru the narrow twisty trail. Now she had just ran down to the cow pastures and was unsure of herself. She didn't go thru the cow pastures to get to the KBB Hills so she turned around probably trying to find something familiar to get her on the the right trail back to her truck. The only problem was that she was headed in the opposite direction....and sure she might have found something that looked familiar....but she admitted that she was lost. So we took her to her truck. Good thing we ran into her again. It would have been a long run back to her truck. We did some trotting on the way back, after all the vet was out for a run and wanted to continue running so we trotted some. This was interesting because the horses could have said "home, fast, okay.....faster, faster, faster." But they didn't. They were quite willing to slow down and sometimes wait for the vet to catch up. Good ride.
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