Saturday, April 21, 2012

Adventure day.

I rode Amber down the road a little way to the little church. She was extremely well behaved! About half-way to the church, we encountered about 5 beagles/hunting dog mixes in a kennel in a front yard who freaked out and made some serious noise. Then I look to my right and there is a dog at a screen door flipping out at the sight of us. Dogs yapping at us on both sides, and Amber plodded along quietly. We unfortunately didn't have very long to adventure, because I was feeding tonight. I did scope out the neighborhood I posted about a few weeks ago, and it looks decent enough. Kind of wondering what my plan is, should any dogs decided they don't like horses riding around in there. I didn't see any loose dogs, but you never know. If the dogs are scared to approach Amber, I think I'd choose to stay on if she's keeping her cool. If she's losing it, depending on the intensity of her losing it, I'd either guide her as she prances away, or bail as she rears and spins and attempt to make her get a grip. If they are not afraid to get up in her business...I think an emergency dismount is the call to make. It opens me up for an attack, but if the dogs are going to chase her/attack her, I'm even more vulnerable mounted. I don't think there are any people to worry about. But I just intend to run them over unless they have any serious weapons. Definitely need to do it more often though, it was a lot of fun. She wanted to get quick on the way home, so I made her walk past the property a few times before she went back. The only thing she got slightly upset about, was a man getting into his car...and I'm like, really? You march merrily past the dogs that sound like they want to eat you for a snack, and you fear some guy in khakis and a tie getting in his little red car? I had her cross the road, since we were coming up on some tall grass at that time, and I'm wary of tall grass in the summer. She skittered across the road, away from the terrifying man and his car. She pranced and attempted to trot when she saw the barn. A boot with my leg, a little pop the rein (I don't know if I can have an inside or an outide out of the arena?) and she settled down and kept walking. Casey happened to drive by...she said I looked like I was going to crap myself. I probably did, because I wasn't sure how she'd feel about me riding on the roads. Haha. I'm going to try to do it again tomorrow, and ride down the neighborhood. Should be fun!

2 comments:

  1. Awesome! Riding on the roads is definitely fun if you have a horse that's good about it :) And especially with friends. I don't know if you have friends to ride on the road with, but that's so fun too!
    I know about the whole spooking-at-things-that-they-really-shouldn't-spook-at-and-not-spooking-at-things-they-should thing. :P Ohhh yeah. That's just so much fun. But good for her for getting past those dogs!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Used to ride on the roads all the time, but traffic is so bad around here, I just would never even try anymore.

    My PJ once spooked at a guy changing his boots from the back of his SUV. We sailed sideways across the road, up a hill and into a stand of evergreens before we stopped. Boy, was that guy SCARY!!! (not.) Silly horses.

    ReplyDelete