Sunday

Seriously, some of those horse trailers are nicer than my apartment!

We went on a trail ride on Sunday. It felt good to be out and my horse was a good boy. Except I discovered he likes tuna fish.

Don't worry, I didn't feed him any. After all, he's a vegetarian. But he tried to eat my sandwich.

Not sure why he'd eat tuna fish but turned down applesauce mixed with grain and apple-flavored paste wormer. Really, I think the later would be more appealing than tuna, to a horse?

I prefer the sunny, open trails over the shady, damp, wooded trails- they are too buggy for my horse, although pretty with all of light filtering down on the ferns.

I told Paint Girl that after she sees the movie Twilight, she won't be able to ride in these woods again without thinking of Edward and Bella and vampires. She said, oh great.

I took a little video of the last leg of the ride as we head for home. I love the clippity-clop of My Boy's shoes on the pavement. I hope you don't get dizzy from the bobbing of My Boy's head! By the way, my horse was so good, he didn't need to follow the mares on the little trail alongside the road.

A horse ran up to the fence on our right, so I quickly turned off the video so I could be sure My Boy didn't startle. Then I snapped a picture for you since he was such a pretty Paint. I think they call this a medicine hat marking? It's unique.

We had a little issue at the end of the ride.

Paint Girl wrote about our trouble in this post. The old saying "what can go wrong will go wrong" applies here. A few things I learned from this experience. First, always bring extra food and beverages. I ate the sandwich on the trail, so all I had was a smashed protein bar at the bottom of my saddle bag- from last September. It had wintered in the horse trailer. But when you are hot and hungry, you eat what is available.

Second, bring water for the horses. We were only an additional hour and a half later than our original departure point, but that could have easily become 3 hours or more. Even though we were only a ten minute drive from home and were not on a major road trip, if you can't haul your horses home, you are up a creek without a paddle (bad cliche since we didn't have any water.....)

Lastly, always do a thorough check of all equipment before venturing out. We checked our tack, and the horse trailer tires....but we didn't think to check the truck tires (or valve stems, more specifically) as they have been fine and the truck has been driven recently. Sometimes I guess you just don't know something needs fixed until it is broken!

Overall, we were proud of how good our horses were considering it'd been months since we'd hit the trails!