Had a fantastic 2 days with my daughter and my riding buddies from my Chenango days. There's a group of 8 of us that make up a group called "Riding Colorado". We rode many, many trails together and one of the members, Margi Evans, wrote 2 books about the trails. Since the first book was published, we've done a summer trip each year with our horses to ride somewhere new. Our first trip was South Dakota, then Buena Vista (missed that one, thanks to my job), then Red Feather Lakes. This summer there was a 2nd trip to celebrate a special lady. Nancy Mileger turns 70 at the end of the month and we all headed to M-Lazy-C ranch with our horses to celebrate and ride. Some of the group brought their husbands and I decided to bring my daughter, Kendall.
We had a blast!! So glad I took her.
The first day, we arrived in the afternoon and took a ride for a couple hours. Kendall wanted to collect different pieces of twigs from trees. It gave us good practice sidepassing up to trees, taking steps forward and backward, and getting precise about where our feet went. Kendall didn't want to manage Rain after a bit, so I ponied her for a lot of the ride. We got back to camp just as it was starting to rain. Perfect timing. We then got ready for Nancy's b-day party and put horses away for the night.
In the morning, we got up and packed up to head to Dome Rock for the day. There were 12 of us riding together! It was a big group and I was watching closely as we headed out to be sure my little girl was safe. Rain has been on so many trail rides and she's always safe and solid, but my daughter is only 7 and keeping her safe was my main priority. We rode together nearly the entire 5 hours. At one point, we held hands on our horses and I had a moment of motherly bliss.
Toward the end, I noticed that Z had become extremely pair-bonded to Rain. I didn't feel comfortable dealing with it among my non-Parelli friends, I'm ashamed to say. Margi wanted to take Kendall fast and away from the group down the trail. I couldn't tell if Kendall wanted to go or not, but I told her she couldn't. Margi decided to take off at one point and Kendall seemed sad that she couldn't go. She later told me she was kidding and she didn't really want to ride fast with Margi and that she wanted to stay with the group. That girl...
I managed to get Z further back in the group, away from Rain and she did ok. I'll take her on more trail rides where she can practice being away from the group and gain more confidence. It's interesting, because I trail ride with Z alone so often and yet she seemed to get a lot of her confidence from Rain in the group. I want to stop and really examine that and figure out how to help her feel more confident. That was her first ride with a group that size and maybe it's just a matter of more group riding.
Pics of our ride will be coming soon. We had such a great time!
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