JR, the Tall is\u00a0almost three and started by Jenny Vaught He’s been doing great. I got another woman to ride Sage (his step mother) and I rode JR up in the Pine Dell 40 acre hay field. That went so well, we rode farther and went by some potentially scary places. JR showed no sign of fear. Then I started to ride him in the 40 acre hay field by myself, and farther.<\/p>\n
Sunday,\u00a0SKIPPY \u00a0and JR went for our first real trail ride. I didn’t realize that neither Skippy’s new owner or Jenny had ever loaded him. So, JR and I played for a bit in the arena while his owner played trailer loading.<\/p>\n
I never thought we would go on the trail ride, but after a while\u00a0Skippy climbed right in and stayed. He will do anything for his\u00a0owner!<\/p>\n
We got to our park and started to play with the horses to get them\u00a0calmed down and listening to us. SKIPPY wasn’t calming down. We
\ndecided to go for a trail WALK. It wasn’t very far to our first mud\u00a0puddle, so we practiced going through mud at a walk. Both JR and
\nSkippy found out that mud wasn’t so bad. Another short distance was\u00a0another wider mud puddle, so we had a great time in this mud. JR
\nlearned how to stand in the mud and back up through it. He also\u00a0learned how to paw and sling the mud right on Skippy’s white hair. I
\nwas so proud of him! Skippy learned how to drink the muddy water and\u00a0not rush too fast through it.<\/p>\n
We walked back and played in the first puddle again. Skippy’s owner\u00a0decided that he was now ridable.<\/p>\n
We went to the trailer and mounted. Skippy started moving very fast\u00a0and his owner had a heck of a time getting him to disengage his hind
\nquarters. JR and I came over and just stood as close as we could get\u00a0to him to help him relax. Skippy finally gave his hindquarters
\nand came to a stop.<\/p>\n
Skippy’s owner thought about ending the trail ride right there.\u00a0But we started up again and headed to the direction of the mud
\npuddles and away we went.<\/p>\n
We successfully walked across the mud and went on down\u00a0the trail. JR walks across mud puddles much better now than Velvet!
\nI’m going to get Velvet and take her for a mud puddle walk.<\/p>\n
JR likes to start running about every 1 1\/2 minutes, so I use the\u00a0wide variety of methods we have to stop or slow him down. However,
\nseveral times during the trail ride, JR told me that I was being too\u00a0heavy on the reins and he was starting to learn how to brace. He
\nwould take his head and bend it down and shake his head from side to\u00a0side. I am commiting the worst crime of all…creating brace!<\/p>\n
Not too far from the last mud puddle, Skippy took off back towards\u00a0the trailer. But, the owner was able to get him to run in a circle
\nand gradually got his hindquarters to disengage. We had\u00a0another “Should we quit now discussion”, but decided that Skippy
\nwould win big time if we went back to the trailer at this time, so we\u00a0pressed on.<\/p>\n
We progressed down the trail with lots of hindquarters disengaging on\u00a0Skippy’s part and some on JR’s part.<\/p>\n
We saw our first bike from a nice distance. We stared at it.<\/p>\n
We crossed a blacktop road and kept on going for a while. Skippy’s\u00a0owner decided that her emotional and physical self was finished and
\nneeded to return to the trailer.<\/p>\n
Well, you know how that went. Skippy went into high gear again\u00a0several more times. He also started hopping. Skippy’s former owner
\ntold us that he reared straight up 22 times the last time she rode\u00a0him. Skippy’s new owner is nervous about that. When he started
\nhopping, she got very nervous.<\/p>\n
JR tried to run every half minute. I have a lot more control over\u00a0JR, so we got this under control in no time at all. Although we did
\nhave another episode of head shaking to tell me I was committing the\u00a0horrid brace crime again.<\/p>\n
We made it past the 2nd puddle with great success. We were walking\u00a0along with both horses at a calm walk.
\nWe looked at each other and marveled. This was an excellent time to\u00a0reward the horses, so we dismounted and walked the rest of
\nthe way to the trailer.<\/p>\n
Neither horse spooked at anything. Skippy was very emotional. JR\u00a0just wanted to go fast down the trail. He thinks trail riding is a
\nlot of fun.<\/p>\n
Skippy’s owner is glad to be alive. I am also glad to be alive and\u00a0glad that I’m not Skippy’s owner!<\/p>\n
I went home and went to bed on a late Sunday afternoon! I was too\u00a0physically and emotionally exhausted for a celebatory wine!<\/p>\n
All Monday during the day, I let myself go into extreme guilt for the\u00a0bracing crime that I had committed. I was ready to hang up my
\nvirtual spurs and give JR back to Jenny. Last Monday group lesson,\u00a0JR started to canter too fast, my fear came up and I was hanging onto
\nthe reins for (gasp) balance!<\/p>\n
Monday nite level 1 lesson came. Before the lesson started, I\u00a0mounted JR and took him outside. Miracle of Miracles occured. He
\njust walked!!! I actually got to tell him to speed up. During the\u00a0lesson, we did great..we trotted and cantered and I didn’t commit one
\nsingle bracing crime. I have turned a big corner!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JR, the Tall is\u00a0almost three and started by Jenny Vaught He’s been doing great. I got another woman to ride Sage (his step mother) and I rode JR up in the Pine Dell 40 acre hay field. That went so well, we rode farther and went by some potentially scary places. JR showed no sign of fear. Then I started to ride him in the 40 acre hay field by myself, and farther. Sunday,\u00a0SKIPPY \u00a0and JR went for our first real trail ride. I didn’t realize that neither Skippy’s new…<\/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":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","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=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3133,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/3133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}