Can it be that Cisco and I rode once on a trailride in the fall of 2016 and nothing since? The best thing to bring Cisco’s legs back to health is good straight line riding. Amazing that the Rock Island hiking, biking and equestrian trail near my house was just completed. I haven’t rode him in a month or so and we are going on a very short trail ride with 3 other riders.
The equestrian parking is right next to an outdoor tree covered hoarder 1/2 acre like you see on The Pickers tv show. It even looks a little scary to us humans.
Cisco always is nervous in new places, but he manages it well. He manages it by moving. Getting on Cisco atop the trailer wheelwell took a minute or so. He finally stopped long enough to make it safe for me to climb on. We walked around the parking area and got calm enough to stop and wait for the other riders to get ready. Then off went the group!
Oh, we discovered the hoarder has a barking dog that was coming at us. Most of us relaxed when we saw the dog had a chain. Then a man’s voice called the dog’s name and told us that we were not bothering the dog. “The dog is OK with horses,” the voice yelled. There is no house in the hoarder lot, but there is a funeral home tent.
After we got past the hoarder and we were all able to breathe again, we discussed that experience. We were not worried about us bothering the dog. We were worried about the dog bothering our horses. Our leading rider thought that the chain was not attached to anything. She did not relax when she saw the chain. We also thought maybe the hoarder lives in the funeral home tent.
Cisco was OK behind the lead horse. He likes to get calm by walking faster and faster, but I managed to keep him out of the lead horse position because we would have been out of sight of our group in minutes.
After about a mile, Cisco snorted about six times. That was his tension leaving his body. I loved hearing those snorts.
We turned around to return to the parking lot. On the way back, Cisco snorted again several times, but the snorts were much softer. He still had tension to get rid of, but it was much less. We had to pass an large object that was wrapped on light weight plastic. It billowed in the wind. The horses all checked it out and continued to walk on.
Cisco had walked for about 45 minutes without a misstep. I did ask him to speed up into a gait when we got to the parking lot and he immediately started pacing. I shut that down quick. We were done. The group picked up another rider and were going to continue the ride in the other direction.
I loaded Cisco into the trailer and headed home.
On my dead end road were two little doggies. They had no humans with them. One of them stood in the middle of the road.
I stopped the truck and got out. They took off running.
Sigh
I went around to the back of horse trailer and called the dogs. One of them decided I might be a nice human. They circled back to me.
This is when Cisco joined our conversation. Cisco did not like being in the trailer. He started yelling and stomping his feet. If I were little dogs, it would scared me too. Off they ran.
Finally the mini boarder collie looking dog, came back and allowed me to pet and lift her into the truck. The other dog came close, but was too scared to let me touch him. I decided to go home, get Cisco out, get the doggie passenger in my car and return to the lost dog area.
I discovered my passenger had tags with name and phone number! I had to wait at the lost dog area only a little while before the rescue posse showed up. Nikki was on my leash and Charlie hovered nearby.
Job done and nap time for me!