Because I have such and wonderful horse of Yes in Cisco, it is difficult to work up much incentive to ride the Horse of No, Lucky Star. Lucky might be near full recovery from his accidental leap over the fence and ripping up his foot in September 2015.
I had incentive today. It was feet trimming day with Tony Vaught. I took him to the arena in which I ride. He and Cisco trailered over together. Cisco was first out of the trailer. I tied him up. Lucky Star got to wear the saddle, so I tied him up next to the tack room door. I opened the tack room door and Lucky Star’s head dove into the tack room and picked up the horse feed bag. He picked it up and swung it out of the trailer in one swoop. I got it away from him and moved it to the side. Then Lucky Star’s head dove into the trailer and ripped the alfalfa pellets bag. He tried to pick it up, but failed and ripped a chunk out of the sack. I then managed to tie Lucky’s head closer to the trailer so he couldn’t reach inside the trailer. I whipped the saddle blanket and saddle on the big mouth horse, moved the feed sack back into the trailer and took off with Cisco and Lucky to the arena. Whew. It was a humid day and sweat was running down my nose.
We proceeded to the arena. I took Lucky into the round pen. Suddenly, he noticed the guy in the tree line sawing a downed tree. He snorted, blew out the big alarm noise and body was fully alert to danger of being eaten. The tree guy had filled up his truck and left the tree line. I let Lucky loose and asked him to run around the pen. Lucky ran around the round pen in his imitation bronc posture where he puts his head way down and crow hops. This causes the saddle to move forward to his neck. I loosened the saddle and moved it back to the correct position. He ran around again with an even worse bronc imitation. The saddle slipped forward. I took off the saddle and asked him to resume our warm up. I thought he was fine to ride, so I resaddled him. We left the round pen without our halter. We were walking to our bridle (at liberty) when a horse loose in the pasture decided to run at full speed. Lucky Star decided to take off too. Whoowe! By the time he was done with his bronc act and appearing ferocious to the running horse, the saddle had slipped up to his neck. OMG. He let me catch him before the saddle swung under his neck. We did another resaddle. It takes a lot of human energy to whip that saddle off and on a horse. My nose wasn’t the only thing to have sweat dripping and running.
Finally, Lucky Star was ready to ride. He trotted around a circle without doing the bronc imitation. I got him and told him to move. Oh, a fly must be bothering his hind leg. I asked him to move and he stomped his back leg. Dratted flies. Oh wait, stomping his back leg is an argument against moving forward. We did our argument removing hindquarter turns and were able to move forward. The rest of the ride was wonderful. His gait is the smoothest flat foot walk and fox trot in the universe. I decided against cantering today. His feet really needed the trim that Tony Vaught was going to do today. We played some point to point games which he loves. He loves to stop and point to point is a stop game.
It was time to get off Lucky Star and saddle up Cisco. Cisco warmed up with running a circle around me…at liberty. I came upon the idea to give him the verbal canter signal with me on the ground. What a stroke of intelligence I have.
Warmed up and mounted. I decided to play the cow game with Lucky. I had my stick and string. Cisco and I drove that Horse of No around the arena, in a circle. We changed directions. We crossed the pole, went around the barrels. Of it was fun to drive Lucky Star around. Cisco was darn excited that he could drive the leader of the pack around too. What a big day for both these horses.