Happy trails...
The only problem with going riding on Saturday is that I have to get up at the butt crack of dawn in order to get the horses ready to leave by 8am. This means that I get up earlier on Saturday mornings than I do during the week day, ugh. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a morning person. I generally walk around like a zombie for about 2 hours after I wake up. Regardless, no matter how difficult it is to drag myself out of bed, it's always worth it when I get on my horse.
So the riding place today was Princess Place, which is one of my favorite places to ride in Florida. The park isn't that big, but it's really beautiful out there and the trails are great. The footing is excellent and most of the trails are shaded by huge old oak or pine trees. There are plenty of places along the trails where they have provided water (water hoses and troughs), and the horse trail head is a really nice, open area with plenty of grass and shade. They have a well at the trail head so that you can water and wash your horse. Overall, the place is very horse friendly and I love going out there.
We had my family's big rig today (Exis 4 horse slant load with living quarters) because me, my mom, and my mom's boyfriend were riding today. I'm very intimidated by the slant load trailer, which I need to get over because I plan on getting one some day. I think the problem is that I don't like the idea of getting into the trailer with the horse to unhook them. With a straight load, you don't have to worry about that. You just unhook their head, open the back of the trailer, and the horse comes out. You can't do that with a slant load because of the partitions in the trailer. You have to get into the trailer to open the partition so that the horse can get out. While this isn't a big deal with Reiny Man, it's a whole nother story with Ms. Glori.
I'm still not sure what happened with Ms. Glori prior to my purchase of her in regards to the trailer. The people that I purchased her from said that she was in a trailering accident, but they didn't go into any details as to what happened in the accident. However, her behavior with trailers does not indicate that she was in a wreck of some kind, since she loads willingly. The problem happens when it is time for her to come out of the trailer. She flies out like a cannon ball, which anyone that has unloaded horses before knows that is very dangerous. If you don't get out of her way, you will be trampled. We have tried everything from trying to distract her with food while someone is opening the back door to using a crop and popping her on the butt anytime she tries to back up while the door is opening. It slows her down a little, but not much. Last weekend, she broke the butt bar on my mom's new trailer because I didn't get it out of the way in time.
My mom's boyfriend (Denton) has had Pasos all his life and he is happy to work with me whenever he is here. Today we tried a new approach with Glori that wasn't all that successful. He got into the trailer with her and I closed the door behind him and latched it. When he unhooked her, she immediately tried to fly out of the trailer, which didn't work because the door was closed. She banged into the door a couple of times and when she finally stood still, I opened the door and she flew out of the trailer. She was scared, and Denton thinks that she might have gotten her feet stuck under the back of the trailer at some point in the past when she was getting out, and this is why she reacts the way she does. She flies out as quickly as she can to avoid getting caught under the step. We talked about it, and we decided to try doing something that seemed to work pretty well the last time we attempted it, which was to turn her head around and let her walk out of the trailer.
When we got home today, Denton got in the trailer with her and she acted a little silly when he unhooked her, but when I opened the door she was standing quietly in the trailer looking at me. He walked her to the door and she jumped out, but it wasn't as bad as the last time we attempted this. She was much calmer, so we may be making some progress. The only problem is working her with a straight load trailer (for an explanation on straight load vs. slant load, see this post). I think that what I'm going to have to do is find a way to secure my trailer and then start putting her daily feed it in. That way she can get in and out of it on her own and she will learn that it isn't dangerous. My eventual goal is to get a slant load trailer, but for the time being I have to make do with what I've got.
If there are any horse people that are out there reading this blog, if you have any suggestions on what to do to help with this, let me know. :)
BTW, the ride was great today. My cousin and I got ahead of everyone and let our two out a little bit. Since you may not know this, Pasos tend to be very competitive little horses. Without any urging from either of us, Glori and my cousin's horse, Habs, starting racing each other, which was really fun. Habs has a very fast largo while Glori has a nice canter, so they went head to head for a little while until they tired. It was a lot of fun out there today, the weather was gorgeous, although it could have been a tiny bit cooler.
Overall, it was a great day!
Posted by Shadoe at December 08, 2001 10:45 PM