Progress with different horses

Today Zoe and I went on the trail with new horses and riders.  I know the riders but haven't had the chance to go on the trail with them.  Gabe, a 14 year old black arab gelding, and Squiggy, a 15 year old arab gelding, were our companions.  It was interesting to see how Zoe would do with these horses.  Gabe can be a handful, he just doesn't have the trail experience and his rider is doing great but she also needs more trail experience.  Squiggy was a great trail horse, calm and just needs more exposure to these trails.  We all trades places in the "line up" and Zoe did great.  I remember a time when it used to bother her to have a squirrelly horse behind her, but today was fine.  Gabe was sometimes traveling at his own speed, not the speed the rider requested and when Gabe was disciplined sometimes he would have a fit.  Zoe didn't mind.  Squiggy had boots on and managed to get one loose going down a hill.  We stopped and his rider put it back on and it took her a while to find a mounting place to get back on her horse.  Zoe just stood there and waited.  Gabe was a bit impatient and had to "have a job to do" while waiting.  It was nice to see that my horse would stay calm.

She did remind me that she is a horse...on the way back, dropping down into the meadows, we took a small rutted rocky trail heading down a hill.  The other 2 horses took the wider trail next to us.  The distance between the horses was hardly anything, so the following wasn't an anxious separation issue.  Zoe decided to drop her head down to snatch a bit of dry grass as we were negotiating the down hill trail, just as she dropped her head a deer jumped out of the bushes on the right.  Zoe did her gazelle imitation and leapt out the the rutted trail up on the knoll on our left and just stood there.  Once she saw it was a deer-no problem.  I was glad she just decided to stop there.  There was no time to think about staying in the saddle, it's a time where you just had to be riding and not just sitting on your horse.  I stayed on no problem.  Heels down, centered riding, remaining calm - helps.  I can remember a time when both Zoe and I would not have come out of that kind of a situation with any amount of success.  So even tho my horse reminded me that she is a horse, watching out for "number one" -  I do see some progress in our riding.  I told her "see that's what happens when you try to snatch some grass."