A friend invited me to go on a trail walk with our horses today and I'm so glad I decided to take her up on her offer. I arrived at the park about 10:00 a.m. and unloaded our horses. America unloaded very nicely, in a slow and controlled manner and began grazing...there was a lot of pretty nice grass in the parking area!!
It took a few minutes for all of us to get everything ready to head out to the trails and America took full advantage of this time to graze, graze, and graze some more!! When we were ready, I started asking her to move her feet by moving her body parts around. I did it to get her focused on me and not on everything else, including the grass!! We headed off down the trail and I was paying particular attention to America's reactions, whether her head was up, down, or level, her breathing, her pace, is she blinking or staring, and whether she was focused on me or something else. I was so pleased when, for 99% of our trail walk, America was very relaxed, her breathing was even, her head was level, and she was connected to me; she would walk when I walked and stop when I stopped. She eventually was confident enough, towards the end of our walk, to allow me to drive her from zones 3 and 4!
America took everything in stride. We came across some orange safety fence out in the middle of nowhere, we went up and down some pretty good sized hills (for Florida anyway), came across a BIG piece of machinery and some porta-potties. None of this caused America any concern, in fact, she was curious about all of it and investigated everything. We did have a couple of moments when her head went up, her ears were forward, and she was really studying something she was seeing but when I asked her to focus on me by moving her around, it was easy to get her attention. We had another moment when something was running through the woods. I was happy when America didn't want to bolt and run but instead, turned, faced, and waited to see what I was going to do. She was looking intently in the direction of the noise but again, it was easy to get her focused back on me.
We also played a bit of "leap frog" on the trail both leading and following and America seemed to have no issues either being in the lead or being in the back. It was interesting that both horses, when in front their ears were forward and when they were behind their ears were back listing behind them. I think America really enjoyed being in the lead though and looked like she thought it was really interesting.
We did some transitions on the trail rom walk to trot back to walk and then stop. America kept pace with me and my hand was open on the lead rope!! I played with using just my energy to cause the transitions and America really connected with my energy.
I really enjoyed going on this trail walk. It gave me the opportunity to expose America to a lot of the things we will encounter on future trail rides and see just how she will react to those situations. I'm very comfortable saying and thinking once we have the walk, trot, canter, and bending to a stop at all three gaits going well in the round pen and arena, we should be able to go trail riding with confidence.
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