Shuttle made her first trip out across the open prairie today. It was her first real ride since I was given the O.K. to get on her again two weeks ago. I mean, I rode her once in Texas, and I rode her yesterday for a short stint, but the snow on the ground and the overcast nastiness made for a miserable ride. But today it was sunny and gorgeous out- even though it might have only made it to a high of 40 degrees.
We saddled up and rode the fence-line through the Saddle Horse Trap (a trap is a smaller pasture). The saddle horse trap is about 70 acres and we rode about 1/3 of that fence line to the gate that lets us out into the Saddle Horse Pasture. There we long trotted out down the cow trail, through running creeks, creeks covered in snow drifts, mud, hills and otherwise varied terrain. You’d have thought she’d been traveling through the country her whole life the way she just moved out. She wanted really bad to stop and look at the cows across the road, but that’s okay- tomorrow, she’ll get to move them, so that should satiate, for a short while, that desire!
I was really proud of her. She really rode like I hadn’t been off of her for 6 LONG months. She went where I pointed. A lot of young horses will try to jump a creek bed, with water in them or not- she simply went where I pointed at generally the speed that I wanted. A couple times she tried to see if I would let her breeze herself (breezing is a racehorse term meant to let one really run- but not at race pace), but she can’t yet. I don’t want her to overdo it. I can’t recall when she’s been through snow- since it rarely snows in the part of Texas where I lived, but she trotted right through it like it was nothing.
I smiled the entire ride. I LOVE SHUTTLE!
That is so awesome!!! I’m glad to hear she’s on her way to being back to her old self.