We're still a couple of weeks away from being able to ride in the new indoor arena. The neighbors have a covered track that we can use for a fee, and since our barn owner has agreed to cover the fee while the arena construction is still underway, I decided to bite the bullet and take Cisco over to see what my chances of dying were going to be.
I wasn't totally stupid - I led him over the first time with the intent of doing groundwork. Having had two months off, and finally some warmer weather, I was expecting to deal with a slightly exuberant pony.
Cisco mostly exceeded my expectations for that trip. Mind you, I had set the bar extremely low, anticipating him to be a stressed, sweaty mess. There was some stress, but not to the point that he lost his brain. He even gave me some moments of dropping his head and showing some relaxation, although inevitably that would be when a pigeon would start flapping and he would scoot forward.
The track isn't all that wide, maybe the width of a barn aisle. Thus, it was difficult to do much goundwork that would involve disengaging the hind end. So we were stuck with mostly leading and backing work.
The only time Cisco got really stressed was when I took him into the indoor "round" pen. There is a room set inside the track that they converted to an indoor pen. It's square, and when the door is shut it's completely closed in. I knew that taking him in there would be a huge ask of him. I didn't want to let him loose to run around frantically as I was trying to promote relaxation for the day, so we just walked around a bit. He went in without hesitation, which I was surprised at, but once inside he got very worried, which showed up as not being able to turn to the right away from me. He got better the second time that we went in, but I didn't want to push it after he had been pretty good so far.
And then it got cold again, and I couldn't go back over.
Until this weekend!
On New Year's Day, it was a balmy -5 celsius. I made plans with a mother and daughter at my barn for us to head over to the track for a ride so that Cisco could have a babysitter. Turns out, he became the babysitter for the others!
Cisco was a bit sticky about entering the track - the blue doors that swung open were a bit scary. Once inside, the daughter led her horse around for the first lap or two and Cisco followed. After that, he put his big boy pants on and led the way, serving as a barrier for the daughter's OTTB who might have recognized the oval shape and took quite a while to settle into a walk.
I was ready to trot before the others were so I turned Cisco away from the others and we went by ourselves for a nice, steady trot. We ended the ride shortly afterwards as the ponies were all sweaty (no one has clipped yet) and we were all happy with our first ride in two months.
Since that ride went so well, we made plans to repeat it the next day.
Helmet cam footage of a lap of the track.
The horses all settled in much faster, so we did a bit more trot and even threw in a canter. I giggled the whole time we cantered - Cisco felt like an overstuffed sofa rolling down the track. Chonky boi needs to get back to work to lose some of those holiday pounds!
I was really happy with the first two rides of the season. Boring, simple rides are always good when you've been out of the saddle for a bit!
We probably won't manage another ride until next week though. The track does have lights, so technically I could ride in the evenings, but by the time I get out there after work it's just too damn cold. There is little incentive to layer up enough in the dark to get a ride in on a shadowy oval. It's probably only going to happen during daylight hours until the indoor gets done.
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