First Ride Out

We've been experiencing a last kick at summer this week. The daytime temperatures have been beautiful, it just takes all day to get there. It now gets dark by about 7:30 in the evenings, which makes it difficult to get a chance to do any riding outside after work as I don't get to the barn until about 6pm.

This week, my day off happened to be on one of the nicest days of the week, so I was determined that I would be riding outside. I was really hoping to head out to one of the stubble fields that surround the barn, but would need a barn mate to babysit Stitch and I. If that didn't pan out, then I would settle for walking around the yard. 

I put a post up on the barn's Facebook group the night before and there was one person who was able to join me (and a whole lot who I will try to get out with on a weekend). Plans were made and we were riding out at noon on Monday. 

We had two options on where to go. The field on the opposite side of the road had been planted with potatos this year. They were harvested a couple of weeks ago, which of course involves digging the rows up. We couldn't tell until we got over there just how deep the rows were going to be. Last year I took Cisco over at the end of the season and they had harrowed the field and it was a foot deep with loose top soil. Not great to walk through. If that is what we were heading into, we were going to move down the road to the stubble field, which is a bit further away but would be easier to walk in. 

It turned out that the potato field was the perfect place for a walk - there was a packed road all around the field, wide enough for probably 3 horses to walk side by side. Perfect to be able to walk around on a loose rein and chat with a friend. Especially when your horses were behaving perfectly, as ours were.

This was Stitch's 14th ride. I was pretty confident that he would be a good boy on his first ride out, and I was right. We did almost the whole thing on the buckle. There were short moments where he had to lead, and lots of time that he was behind.

Stitch was in the lead when we came around a bend that the bushes were hiding a big, scary green monster - some sort of John Deere harvesting equipment. Stitch gave it the hairy eyeball but stayed in the lead to get us past it. 

This is passing the big scary green monster. 

The only time that he needed reassurance from his babysitter was almost at the end when we apporached the pipeline site. It's a small chainlink fenced area that has large white pipes that come out of the ground, a small shed and a flagpost with a wind sock. I'm not sure what he saw there that worried him, but he gave it a very wide berth.

It was a perfect first ride out for a baby horse. Now I just need the weather to cooperate so that we can get out there again before winter sets in.