Friday, May 26, 2017

Change of Venue, Change of Tack

I have been fussing around for the last few weeks griping about the fact I don't have a round pen or any contained place to ride.

It finally dawned on my that I have a friend with a lovely ranch, not 15 minutes from my house and she has a small fenced arena.  So I called Catherine and asked if I could bring my horses to her place for a few days.  She was more than generous and said that would be no problem.

So I packed up their stuff and took both horses to her ranch.   Wow!!  The horses were pretty sure I had hauled them to horse heaven.  The barn is beyond beautiful with 12 x 14 stalls, each with an attached outdoor paddock.  This opens out into what I would have to guess is a 30 or so acre pasture.

The arena is on the small side and just what I wanted for Silk.  I unloaded the horses and Silk didn't even have time to check out his new digs as I was tight on time.  I just tacked him and brought him to the arena and went to work.  I did a lot of ground work with him and then got on.

I had added a running martingale to his tack and this was my first opportunity to see how he would respond to it.

He was great.  The best ride I have had on him.  I was so proud of how well he did at a new venue.  He can be prone to being spooky but he didn't have a problem in this arena.  We did a lot of trot work and he finally stopped messing around with his head and settled into a nice rhythm.  The running martingale seemed to help remind him that he was going to be galloping and helped with his rooting issues.

We had a few moments, he didn't like it when my helmet hit an overhanging branch and it made a noise (I ended up ducking my head every time we went under the trees but overall I was very happy.  I will leave off writing and share pictures of his time at the ranch.

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