Cob Jockey

I've gotta catch up - we've had some adventures lately!

Day parking: EMPTY!!! It's a Christmas miracle!

When I saw both Leah and I had the Friday before Easter off work and the forecast said sunny and 80, I knew that was our day. And for once, which never happens with horses, everything went exactly to plan.

This was my first off-property ride on Disco, and I really did enjoy it. The worst thing he did all day was call and gawk at other horses, but he came right back to me each time I asked him to focus. It was more young horse stuff than young stallion stuff.

The ride started out interesting in a couple of ways. We chose to do a very small amount of B, which is a trail that goes up steeply, then down steeply about 3/4ths of a mile later. 

When I asked Disco to go uphill from ride camp, he initially said no - not sure if he didn't want to leave other horses or if the hill was intimidating, but he got over it quickly, and that was his only sticky moment all day.

The most interesting part of the ride happened about 20 minutes later as we were coming down off B with the intent to cross ride camp and go to A. We were coming down off the steep grade straight into our first water crossing, a rocky creek, and as soon as Disco was in the middle of it, we heard a commotion through the underbrush at a campsite maybe 30 feet from us. A horse tied at the hitching post was bucking like a bronco because its saddle had rolled over and was totally underneath it.

Disco started to get excited, so I made a quick executive decision to walk him straight up the middle of the creek away from the horse until the owner got that situation resolved. Not that I'm surprised, but let it be known: water is no issue with this horse.

From there, we had a pretty chill rest of the day. Disco both led and followed Pyro, and we both passed and got passed by other horses. Getting passed was a bit sticky, but in a "this is a good training situation" way, not in a dangerous way.

In the end, we covered 4.5 miles in a leisurely hour and twenty minutes, which was plenty for Disco's current fitness level. It really does not take much to wear him out, and he needs to build the baseline walking fitness before anything else.

We tackled a lot of firsts for us both on this ride:

• First trail ride
• First time being tied to my trailer
• First time in ride camp with other horses around
• First water crossing
• First time being passed and passing strange horses on trail
• First time wearing Scoot Boots (he and Connor are the same size, BLESS)

He's also, as they say, "can broke" now since he didn't object to Leah cracking a cold one midway through. I stayed two hands on the reins and sober for this one just in case, but will be joining her in the future!

The only casualty? My trailer screen! I should have predicted this, but Disco has always particularly enjoyed shoving his nose between bars of all kinds (stall bars, trailer window bars, he's not picky) and he busted the screen out immediately. He's not getting it back either, since he'll just keep doing it, so it's flymasks for him on the trailer from here on out.

RIP the screen on the drop down window

All in all, I was super happy with this trip, and I'm looking forward to doing as much of it as I can this summer with him.