A Two Ride Day

I was able to ride TWICE today. Both rides were on Jasper, but both were very different. For the first, we trailered out to the Mountain to do a nice, slow sweaty uphill walking ride. Our distance wasn't much, but his heart rate got up and we all had a wonderful time visiting and chatting in the warm February sun.

After this, we loaded up and trailered to the barn to act as Steady Eddy on Ony's first road ride. How did it go? It went perfectly, of course. Little Ony lead and followed and was completely cool and collected the whole time. We saw barking dogs, a small herd of galloping horses (and an even smaller herd of little ponies!!), a hunting trial, cars, four-wheelers and kids jumping on a trampoline. He seemed to really, really enjoy himself and worked hard to convince Lacy that he should be trotting. He wasn't excitable at all, he just seemed to think we should be getting where we were going faster than we were. He quickly calmed down and seemed to catch on that walking would be all we would be doing. I think the most shocking things to him on the ride were when we passed a cute little kids horse--he did a double take when Dad threw his daughter up on the horses's back. And Lacy said she felt his heart stop when a horse whinnied to us from waaay back in the pasture. But other than that, he was PERFECT.

The funniest part of the ride, and the one I regret not having my camera with me the most, was when Lacy got off and asked him to follow her across a small ditch with water in it. The embankment wasn't too steep, but Ony wasn't too sure about it. He tried to get as close as possible without getting as close as possible. This involved Ony doing a very good impression of downward dog on the bank. His chest was inches from the ground while his front legs were folded out in front of him. His back legs were still standing. He did it twice while investigating the ditch. I almost fell off Jasper laughing. I can't get over how babyish he is while still acting so mature about everything. That little horse can fold himself in half two times over and still trot.

I'm so proud. Of BOTH my boys.