Last Ride For A While

Today, I did something I never thought I'd do...

I handed my horse over to someone outside of the family to ride for the next couple of weeks.  I've got some traveling to do and won't be able to ride Estes for the next two weeks.  Mom and Bill have three of their own horses to keep in shape and it's their busy season, so they're stretched pretty thin getting their horses out.  So, because of that, I asked Compass at the livery if one of her wranglers would be willing to take Estes out a couple of times a week while I'm gone.

Trust me, this would never have happened under the previous management.  I did everything in my power to keep them away from my horses and here I am, asking the wranglers to lead rides out on my horse.  It still kind of boggles my mind that I even considered asking one of the wranglers to take my horse out, much less the fact that I actually did it.

Compass picked a wrangler she thought would be a good match and assigned him to Estes while I'm gone.  The wrangler spend some time rubbing down Estes and making friends today, and asked important questions like how I wanted her ridden and if there were any "quirks" he needed to know about.  That made me feel a lot better about leaving her.

Bill and I went out for a short bareback ride before I handed over Estes.  It was a really, really good ride.  We spend a fair bit of the ride in a sitting trot, which thrilled me!  I've been working on bareback at something other than a walk and felt pretty good today.  We even hit two or three strides at a canter before I came to my senses.  Sadly, neither of us took a camera out, because we didn't think we'd be out very long.

It's a good thing we didn't have a camera, because I almost came off once.  I managed to sit through a trot , a small temper tantrum, and very short canter and decided to try a hill that I hadn't done so prettily last time we were out.  Well, guess what?  It wasn't so pretty this time, either.  I lost my balance and started to slide off to the left as we were bounding up the hill, so I hooked Estes' side with my right leg and yanked myself back up.  Not very pretty, but better than landing on the ground.

It was a great farewell for two weeks ride.

Part of the reason I'll be gone is that I'm going to work on the "Horse Master with Julie Goodnight" set for her Colorado shoot.  We'll be shooting six episodes in three days and working sun-up to sun-down, so I won't be posting during that time, but I will be taking notes.

During the time I'm gone, I've got some of my favorite old posts scheduled to repeat.  If you haven't read them before, I hope you enjoy them.