Beautiful Miss Meneely and a Fun Ride

I finally got the time to go up to Amy's house so I could meet her beautiful new molly mule foal, Meneely Grace! She also invited me and Cierra to ride with her and some other friends. My truck and trailer are out of commission at the moment so Cierra and I could not take Marie and Tinkerbell up with us. But, Amy generously offered to let us ride some of her horses so we happily accepted the offer

 

Cierra's high school graduation was Friday evening so we were both up late and then had to be up early to get to Amy's by 9:00 am. We did our best but due to doing a quick cleaning of the barn before we left, we got there about 9:30. Amy offered to let me ride her mule, Annabelle. And Cierra would ride her Morgan mare Amanda. I decided to ride her Appy mare Weezie instead. After all, I hate to get between a woman and her mule. Judy McPheters, Carole Norton and another woman, Jennifer Diehl, who I'd never met before. Cierra and I had to take a few minutes to meet and play with little Meneely first. She is such a beautiful little mule and so full of personality. I had brought my own saddle so then quickly saddled Weezie up. Cierra rode Amanda with just a bareback pad. A few in the group had some time restrictions so we rode right from Amy's house and went around all the hay fields. All the horses were good. Weezie and Amanda wanted to move out and both did a bit of prancing but were good and we had a lot of fun and mostly kept the pace down to a walk. When we got back to Amy's, she went with Cierra out to one of the field to let Cierra take Amanda for a quick gallop. We had to play with Meneely just a little more before we left. It was a fun day

 

 

Picnic By The Stream

Our riding plans for today changed multiple times over the course of a week or so. We originally thought about going to the Waterford CDR. But, after much thought, we didn't want to spend the money on an entry fee when neither of our horses were really in shape for the speed we'd need to travel for the ride. And I really hate to withdraw Marie off her meds for her to compete legally. So, we then talked about hooking up with Amy Been and doing a longer ride somewhere up her way. She ended up being busy today. And when I hauled my trailer yesterday, something didn't seem right with the trailer breaks. I just got my truck back from the garage and something is still not right. So, I didn't feel it would be safe to haul the horses anyway. So, Cierra and I decided to just ride from my house. We picked up some lunch from Gowell's store, packed up our saddle bags and headed out around noon time. We rode out to the East Cathance Stream near the snowmobile bridge. I just love this spot, it is really beautiful and the perfect place for a picnic. It's about 4 miles from my house. We moved along where we could. The trail is quite rocky but there are places here and there along it that you can get in some trotting and even a little cantering. At one point I had to dismount to move a tree out of the path and had a bit of saddle slippage problem when trying to mount up again. Good old Marie and her barrel type build. When we got to the stream, we tied up the horses and settled down on a big rock beside the stream and tried to enjoy our lunch. I say tried because one we were sitting still, the mosquito's got a bit annoying. So, we ate quickly then spent some time hiking around the area of the stream and climbing the rocks. The horses were both standing pretty quiet despite the mosquito's so we took our time exploring.

 When we were ready to head back, we mounted up and rode up the stream as far as we could just to explore some more. Cierra had a good teaching moment with Tinkerbell at a spot where she did not want to lead the way down into the stream. But, Cierra got Tink to trust her and got her in. On the way back, I took an old trail I haven't done in years. It has obviously not been used and was had to get though with downed trees and then a bit of bushwhacking to connect to a regular trail, that also needs some serious trimming. Once back on the main trail we picked up the pace a bit more and had a fun ride back. We did about 9 miles and had a wonderful ride

Ticks, Ticks, Ticks......

Cierra and I trailered over to our friend Tracy's house to ride with her and another friend, Nancy Peavy. It was a two mule, two horse day. Tracy was riding Prize and Nancy was riding her mule, Ellie Mae. We were a few minutes late arriving so Tracy and Nancy were ready to ride when we pulled in. Cierra and I quickly tacked up and we were off. It was around 1:30 pm when we headed out. Prize was a little excited when we first arrived as he and my Marie have a "history". And he remained quite fascinated with her the entire ride but he behaved himself. Though at the start of the ride, while going along a flat spot in a field, he did trip over nothing at all as far as we could see and Tracy took a tumble from the saddle. She was fine other than pulling her shoulder a bit from trying to hang onto him. Prize did trot off but not far. All the green grass in the field was too delicious for him to leave. We kept the pace quite slow overall. Cierra had not put on Tinkerbell's boots as the ride, overall, was not rocky. But, Tinkerbell was a bit more sensitive than we'd expected and it was a fairly warm day. We rode over to the Lorax trails in Pittston. We haven't had much rain and everything is so dry right now. After making a couple of loops around the Lorax trails and taking a few dead ends, we rode back to Tracy's, we rode about 15 miles and were in the saddle about 5 hrs due to the slower pace we kept. I dropped Cierra off at her house on my way back to the barn. Had I known how many ticks were on the horses, I'd have taken her back to the barn with me to help me pick them all off. I picked nearly 30 off Tinkerbell and 10 or so off Marie. And when we found more on the both the next day. The Lorax trails are really nice to ride on but I'm not feeling inclined to ride there for a while. It's always been a high tick area but I've never picked up that many in one ride before. YUCK!

Murder Rd

We've been getting some very nice weather finally. I've been very busy with getting the yard cleaned up and looking respectable but Cierra and I have snuck in a few rides out back of the house just bareback and then yesterday, I rode down to Lola's with her for her lesson. We got there early so played around in the field. By the time her instructor showed up though, I was getting cold and the black flies were pretty bad if you didn't keep moving all the time so I rode back home ahead of Cierra.

Today I joined Linda and we went riding down in Topsham.  She picked me up as my truck is in the garage right now. Nancy's trailer was at the parking spot when we got there. She and Joanie were riding together. We didn't run into them on the trail but did see their tracks a few times. It was a perfect day and we had a great ride. We met a number of ATV but all of them were so polite. Marie and Gus don't mind ATV's anyway. When we got back to the trailer, Joanie and Nancy were there so they finished riding just before we did. A home owner right where we park lets us use his hose to water and wash off our horses after we ride so we did. There are still nice people in this world. I only found one tick on Marie and am hoping I didn't miss any. Stupid ticks.... in any case, it was good to be out on the trails and Linda is always so much fun to ride with.

Into the Woods

Cierra and I decided to try out the woods trails today. It took the snow so long to melt this spring it's felt like we were never going to be able to ride in the woods again. We had a wonderful ride. The trail for the most part were ok. There are still a few soft spots but nothing that was a problem to get though. When we took our first gallop up our favorite hill, both Tinkerbell and Marie threw out some bucks! Silly girls. They were as happy to be out on the trails as we were. We did the loop that goes by the old alpaca farm. On the way home, we had to turn around twice to take two more gallops up our big hill. And it was warm enough today that we were able to hose our horses off when we got back from the ride. And both horses rolled good and hard when they were turned out to make sure to put back all the dirt we had rinsed off them.