West Bowdoin

Today Bonnie, Linda and Kathie were coming to ride with me since I am still not mobile with Marie yet. Bonnie and Linda were trailering together and Kathie was on her own. The plan was for them to park at the Shipley's place. The vacant lot across from my old place. There is just room enough for 2 trailers to park there. Then, it happened that Susie was able to join us so the plan was changed to go and ride in West Bowdoin as there is more room for trailer parking there.

I saddled up Marie before heading out and led her over the the Shipley's place to wait for Susie who was picking me up. Kathie was there as she had not been sure about the chance in plan. We chatted until Susie showed up. I loaded Marie up and we headed over to West Bowdoin. It was quite a nice day to ride. The blackflies were a bit obnoxious while everyone was tacking up but once we got moving the bugs weren't really an issue. The trails now has some obstacles to get around. Property owners have put large rocks or dropped trees around a lot of the trail entrances trying to keep ATV's out. They don't mind the horses but it makes for a bit of a challenge in places. Nothing our trusty trail steeds can't handle though. Marie doesn't have shoes yet nor did Kathie's horse Baxter. So, we stuck to the trails with the best footing for them.

The horses and mule were all good today and got along well. Susie kept Spark in the back quite a bit of the ride and the rest of us took turns leading. I was the only one that had an involuntary dismount today. We were all standing still talking and I noticed a tick crawling up Marie face. I was reaching way over to get it off and leaned too far. I felt the saddle slipping but could not stop it and didn't get my feet out of the stirrups quick enough to land on my feet so landed on my butt. Marie was quite unconcerned about the whole thing. There was just one hill in the old tire dump that I went down that caused a bit of concern for Kathie's Baxter. The old tire dump is a gravel pit now and the hill I went down was steep with soft sand. All the other horses have done this kind of thing before and knew to kind of slide down. Baxter had never done anything like that before. But, Kathie did a great job of getting him down and keeping him calm. They are a great team! It was a fun ride!