{"id":2906,"date":"2014-03-16T17:08:54","date_gmt":"2014-03-16T22:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/?p=2906"},"modified":"2014-03-16T17:13:46","modified_gmt":"2014-03-16T22:13:46","slug":"first-trail-ride-in-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/first-trail-ride-in-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"First Trail Ride in 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

March 15, 2014 turned into a 70 degree afternoon. \u00a0A good friend with a fabulous young horse invited Lucky and I to ride at Holden Lake. \u00a0I didn’t ask Lucky and said YES! \u00a0I was excited about the ride. \u00a0We’ve not been on a trail ride since, wait…sometime last year before all my 2013 foot problems started. \u00a0I bet that I’ve not rode on a trail ride since last June or so.<\/p>\n

Lucky had developed a fear of wind last year. \u00a0He went into training with Nichole Copple and Paul Hack to get him over that, but I didn’t get to ride him on the trail after that.<\/p>\n

Holden Lake trailer parking is out in the middle of no-where. \u00a0There are no buildings or trees to block the wind. \u00a0It was a windy day out in the middle of nowhere. \u00a0Lucky and Louie, Chas’ horse got warmed up and we got on. \u00a0Lucky was his usual low energy guy with no frizz to him until I got on. \u00a0We walked a few steps and Lucky became “frizzed up”. \u00a0We managed to walk a few steps and the frizz started. \u00a0Lucky became a horse with an arched neck, pointy ears and decided to toss his head up and down and do a slow speed hip hop dance. \u00a0Riders like me don’t like hip hop horseback riding. \u00a0Lucky and I hip hopped around for a few more minutes and then the decision was clear that I needed to get off. \u00a0Lucky and I had another session of ground warm up. \u00a0This time, he showed some energy during the warm up. \u00a0I didn’t have to convince him to canter and fox trot. \u00a0He was more than willing. \u00a0After about 7-8 minutes, he appeared to have lost most of the hip hop dance routine and settled down into fox trotting.<\/p>\n

I mounted up again and with Chas’ and Louie’s help, we managed to follow them at a \u00a0bit of a high energy trail walk. \u00a0The open field windy area was about two blocks long but we made it into the forest. \u00a0There’s hardly any wind in a forest and our great ride was on. \u00a0Lucky is a “YES” horse on the trail. \u00a0We tried being in the lead for a while, but Lucky likes to burn a fast gait when his position is in front of another gelding. \u00a0The lead horse is the dominant horse is Lucky’s philosophy. \u00a0So, I asked Chas if she and Louie could lead and that worked out well. \u00a0Lucky was under good control and stayed his mandatory horse length behind Louie and he even relaxed a little bit. \u00a0That was after we had words about him not getting to close to Louie. \u00a0Lucky wants to be the lead horse and he takes just a little bit of convincing that can’t pass the lead horse.<\/p>\n

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The trail was just a little “sloggy” making our horses put forth some effort in our smooth ride through the forest. \u00a0We came upon a place on the trail where two thin trees had fallen across the trail. \u00a0Louie stepped over the trees and Lucky jumped like a deer. \u00a0Whoowee…never let Lucky convince you that he can’t jump!<\/p>\n

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Our forest path has a great stream crossing. \u00a0It’s a wide stream crossing. \u00a0The water level is down and we could see the big rocks in the stream. \u00a0Horses have to walk on rocks and into water to get across this stream. \u00a0Chas had to get off Louie and lead him across. \u00a0Once she took the lead across the stream, he relaxed and followed right behind her. \u00a0Now it’s Lucky’s turn. \u00a0We pawed, one front foot at a time. \u00a0I’ve never been on a horse that pawed like he was mad at the ground. \u00a0So we pawed and then we made it across the first portion of the stream crossing. \u00a0We poised on the edge of the dirt ready to either leap across or walk across. \u00a0I was expecting a giant leap when Lucky decided to take a step into the water and walked right across it. \u00a0What a great horse!<\/p>\n

We walked on and turned around after a short distance. \u00a0We managed another stream crossing. \u00a0This time Louie took Chas across. \u00a0She didn’t have to get off. \u00a0Lucky pawed again and made the two stages across the stream.<\/p>\n

We made it to the open field portion to discover the wind had disappeared. \u00a0We had a good flat foot walk going and made it back to the trailers. \u00a0A good trail ride is one where you are alive at the end.<\/p>\n

Lucky was worn and wet at the end of the ride.
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March 15, 2014 turned into a 70 degree afternoon. \u00a0A good friend with a fabulous young horse invited Lucky and I to ride at Holden Lake. \u00a0I didn’t ask Lucky and said YES! \u00a0I was excited about the ride. \u00a0We’ve not been on a trail ride since, wait…sometime last year before all my 2013 foot problems started. \u00a0I bet that I’ve not rode on a trail ride since last June or so. Lucky had developed a fear of wind last year. \u00a0He went into training with Nichole Copple and Paul…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-country-franks-lucky-star","category-missouri-fox-trotter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2906"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2922,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2906\/revisions\/2922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}