Horse Blogging Trail Ride: The Attack of the Evergreen Tree

I still have one more New Orleans post to make, but it’s been pushed out of the line up because I have been inspired.

I went trail riding with Olivia from hellomylivia on Sunday at the Battlefield. She wrote about our adventure here. It was so fun meeting up with her again and going riding! She’s such an awesome person, and such a good rider! Her and Vintage make such a lovely team! We meandered through hill and dale, through forest and meadows and took a gallop through a field. Even though Berry is a very slow thoroughbred, she still has some speed and her and Vintage enjoyed galloping around.

At one point on our trail ride, Vintage took Olivia right into a tree. I did not witness how this happened, but I scrambled to a picture because it was the most hilarious thing. Unfortunately, I only got it when she was already making her way out of it.

The tree attempted to defend itself by spewing bits of itself all over her.

From my perspective, she was just standing there, face planted in the tree, with Vintage standing completely comfortable underneath.

Since the hilarious image burned into my mind, I used my amazing MSPaint skills to draw it out for everyone to enjoy. I want everyone to appreciate how it looked.

Who wouldn’t want to spend some time face completely planted in a tree

I can only hope that everyone will be able to appreciate it in this form.

But anyway, it was a great time! I’m not sure how many miles it was, but we were out there for about three hours.

Olivia is either explaining something or fending off branches/unseen ghosts.

The trails at Manassas are really nice, very well maintained. There was a bit of gravel at times, but even my unshod horses seemed fine. At one point, we had to cross a creek and both the experienced Vintage, and baby Berry were like, “Neeeeeeigh! not happening!”

So I jumped off and lead Vintage though, much like this:

(I got no photos of me on this trip, so enjoy these old photos) That is my first horse Clay I am leading through the water. I have a lot of experience leading horses/people through water. 

Although the photo is an exaggeration because the water was like three inches deep. My ariats were so waterproof, I hardly even got my feet wet!

But still, Y U do this horse!?

Lots of good memories standing in shallow water when we were younger.

But they both went in on the way back, so all was good. And now it will never ever be an issue again, because that’s how horses operate. (dripping with sarcasm there)

Olivia was jumping Vintage over some logs we found, and she was doing great! I don’t think the pictures on her post show it well, but one of the jumps had a really weird approach/landing depending on whatever way she was coming from. Bending line? Snapped line? Wooky line? It was kind of wooky. But she did it well! I love watching her jump Vintage, they make such a great team!

So now that we are experienced, super classy trail riders (we had champagne, obviously), perhaps the next step is doing a judged trail ride? We shall see! First we’ll have to get those saddle pads with pockets it them though, or train Pony to be our pack mule. We passed a few western riders completely loaded with bags and sacks. The battlefield is pretty big, so maybe they wanted to have enough supplies in case they got lost. And then they could be like, “I used to be lost, but not anymore, because now I live here!” as they build little stick houses.

Sadly, at some point on the trail Berry took an ouchy step, as she doesn’t know where to put her little legs (see nearly every post I’ve made on her jumping). I’m giving her a few days off to see how she’s doing. That meant no lesson Tuesday, but I offered to do Friday instead, because Friday is a holiday for us office workers. Woooooo. But since I am unable to speak horse trainer-ease, I’m not sure what this response text means “Let me check I think we hs”. I suppose I’ll have to get clarification, or maybe someone here speaks it?

Completely unrelated, my skid steer is coming tomorrow. It’s time to build my arena. I’m so excited!!