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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