Rampage

Today I just wanted to go for a nice walk in the snow, but Cherry wanted to rampage instead.


Some days you'd never know that she is fast approaching the age of 21.






I hadn't been out to the barn in a few days what with work and everything, so I went out this morning thinking I might go for a little ride and then perhaps trim Cherry's feet. Even though it's been melting for days, there's still a ton of snow on the ground from the latest storm (pics coming soon!). What isn't covered in snow is covered in mud.

I got Cherry out, let her roll in the arena since she hates rolling in mud (good pony!), and then did a little light free lunging. Perhaps not getting out for awhile had made her stiff, I thought. And I was right. She walked around okay, but at the trot was positively gimpy.

We did some more walk, whereupon I came to the conclusion that this was boring as hell and it'd be much nicer to walk around outside.

So I saddled her up and off we went.

The first couple trips around the field were sedate enough. She was loosening up nicely, so I though we'd try a little trot. Cherry thought that a little trot was too tepid, and it would be so much better to pretend to be a big dressage horse instead!

We had a discussion about that and I got my little bit of trot.

That went so well I decided to try a little canter. But Cherry thought it would be SO MUCH MORE FUN to take off bucking instead.

Wheeee!!!!!! Let's gallop AS FAST AS WE CAN through the snow!!!!!!! And BUCK! Bucking is FUN!!!!!

No. Let's not do that.

I made her work instead. We worked on trot-canter transitions until she cantered smoothly with no grunting and hopping around. Then we worked on canter-trot transitions until we had a nice trot instead of a reallyreally slow canter or one step of trot and then immediately back to canter.

It was kinda fun, though. We did some lovely spiral circles and figure 8's, and there was a wonderful moment when Cherry finally gave up the desire to rampage and asked to stretch her neck down instead.

When we were done with our ride, Cherry was just dripping in sweat. It took over an hour to dry her off enough to put her back in her pasture. I didn't mind, though. I got to spend some quality time with her while I blow dried the moisture away and curry combed off the sweat.

As much fun as it might have been to let her careen around the field like a bat out of hell, I just couldn't let that happen. First off, she'd probably have tripped on a snow drift, fell on her face and killed us both. Second, I've learned my lesson about just letting her go. If I do it once, she'll want to do it ever. damn. time. Can't have that. She got to move out, but it had to be on my terms, not hers.



The funny/awesome thing was that I wasn't scared at all when Cherry decided to be 3 years old again. Sometimes that reduces me to a pile of "Maybe we'll just go back to the barn" jittery wreckage, but not today! I was a little annoyed, and my rational mind told me not to let her carry on with her shenanigans because falling on snow would be really cold and crappy. But I wasn't scared.

Also, I must be getting some muscle tone back because I didn't feel unbalanced at all. Not that this is any great accomplishment, Cherry bucks with her head way up in the air. No, the awesome thing was that I felt in complete control of my position and didn't freak out. Well done, me!


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