A Gorgeous Day For A Ride

I woke up the other day to a gorgeous morning. It was sunny and very warm, at least to what we are used to this time of year. I decided while the weather was good for once, that I better get out and spend some time with Brandy. Lately, most of my time has been spent with Chance. Brandy has been feeling a little left out and seems a little jealous of the time I spend with Chance.

I got busy pulling all my tack out of the "tack room", A.K.A the garage, and took it out to my grooming area. I then went out to get my fuzzy, dirty, little Arab. I spent about half an hour grooming her. She was filthy. This horse loves mud. She is always caked in it. Once semi clean, I saddled her up and headed to the round pen. Yes, this girl was finally going to ride one of her horses! Unfortunately I get very limited riding in during the winter, due to pretty nasty weather we get this time of year. On top of that, I only have an outdoor arena, which tends to get quite slippery. We had quite the big rainfall the night before, so I knew the round pen would be a little slick.

I have never ridden Brandy in a round pen before. But when I had my panels set up to "arena" size, I usually used one end of it, especially when loping. Brandy isn't a fully trained horse, and I spend a lot of time doing training with her, like getting that nice and slow jog and lope. We are even still working on side passing, turn on the forehand/haunches and many other things.

Brandy doesn't look to thrilled about being put back into work. The one thing that drives me crazy is that her long pony fur turns yellow in the winter. It doesn't help that she coats herself in mud and poo.



I started with lunging first. This girl has some serious spunk, and if she hasn't been ridden in awhile, I always lunge her first. How she goes from this furry, yellow, muddy girl:



To this......amazes me. She doesn't even look like the same horse.



Brandy bucked like crazy! I am glad I wasn't on her! But she has always been crazy on the lunge line. Not totally crazy, but she gets some serious bucks in. Chance was watching the whole thing and got all worked up, running and bucking in her pasture. Once I felt Brandy had settled down, I put her bridle on and climbed aboard.

We worked on circles, slowing her jog down and then I decided to lope her. I was wondering how the lope would go, considering I hadn't ridden her in a round pen before, but she was really good. She usually crow hops at the lope, something I had been working on, but she didn't crow hop once. She was even loping nice and slow, almost western pleasure slow.



After about half an hour of riding, I just walked around the round pen to cool her out. It was time to head back to the house. We exited the round pen and stopped by Chance. She has never seen anyone on a horse before.



She had been eyeballing me the whole time. I always wonder what they think when they see someone on a horse for the first time.



The rest of the crew were taking a nap in the 65 degree weather. I don't blame them one bit.



Once I got back to the house, I decided I would attempt a face clip on my fuzzy girl. This is the before picture. Unfortunately, my cordless clippers just aren't powerful enough to do the job, so she has a partial face clip. I ended up going out and buying electric clippers. I will be finishing the job later this week and will post the after pictures later.



I had a wonderful day, nothing better then spending it with my girl!