I really wanted to just relax with a horse today, so I decided to take Rain for a ride alone. She and I have covered 1000's of miles together and riding her is like wearing a really comfortable pair of shoes. We went about 5 miles, not very far, on pretty slushy and mucky footing. We have a lot of sand on our trails, so the footing stays decent - but not quite good enough to go cantering around.
There's an area on the trail that washed out badly last summer and requires us to step about 2 feet down into a creek bed to follow the trail. Rain doesn't like that at all. I took my time with her, kept her pointed at the step down and tried to never encourage the try. After a few calm minutes of letting her figure out the answer, she slowly and confidently stepped into the creek bed. I really think it's the look of the ground that worries her. There's some weird vine type plant on the ground and even when we walked the 20 feet or so in the creek bed, she was concerned. Something in her instinctively tells her to tread carefully. Interesting.
Not a lot of horse time and the weather was cold, but a nice ride with my best and favorite horse.
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