Wednesday was very windy. A plastic bag flew out of the trash can where I had Zoe tied up...she was sure it was out to get her. I was getting ready to go out to the trails. After calming her down we went out. Zoe spent alot of time calling today...maybe it was the wind, scary bag, I didn't ride her last weekend (out of town)-don't know and I didn't care. Off we went. Once on the trail she called once but it meant more work for her-didn't turn out so well for her. My goal on this ride was to work some puddles. Seeing it just rained I knew we would find some. Another side goal was to have a good horse in this wind. We found all the major puddles on large roads so we tended to stay on large roads. Every once in a while we did a small single track trail. Puddles usually are no problem. But I wanted to try going down into a puddle and coming up, I wanted to try trotting thru them, I wanted to walk the big long ones-and see how she would do. We got to practice all of those and she mostly did fine, sometimes she would try to walk at the edge of the puddle, but then we had to go back and try again. Second time thru was fine. The wind made her wary of things, but she wasn't jumpy or spooky. She spent alot of time looking around at things. I spent time telling her to keep her attention on where we were going.
On Wednesdays I get to the barn very early. I feed my horses, clean the stalls in the barn and the stalls next to the barn then go out on a ride. I'm usually ready to ride before the barn manager feeds the horses, hence I feed them. Here is a picture of Skippy and Zoe as I was cleaning their place. They had finished eating and were trying to catch some sun so they could warm up.
I am also practicing with loud noises with Zoe. Last fall I started with bubble wrap, moved to larger bags of air for packing. What's with all this practice? Well I've entered Folsom Police Equine Units Equine Challenge. It's in May so I have time to practice alot of things. A friend at my barn volunteers with them and has done this challenge for a few years, this year it is open to the public so I decided to sign up. So from time to time I'll be writing about our practices. The loud noises...last year they had to shoot a gun from horseback...should be interesting. So far I've been able to shoot a BB gun while riding Zoe, and I'm working on the pellet gun-it's the louder one. I can stand next to her and fire off the pellet gun... so we will see how it goes while I'm riding her. Apparently traveling thru large water puddles is part of this event also. Hence my riding thru the puddles today.
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