Trainer Day

Today I went out about 6 pm as I had an appointment with a trainer, Travis Webster. Since the last two times I tried to load Sinwaan in a straight load trailer were unsuccessful (he would go in but back out too fast) I decided I needed some help. I had heard Travis charged by the hour and even brought his own 2 horse straight load to the property. We got right to it. Travis showed me how to use a dressage whip and tap the horse on the hip to teach forward motion and then use that to load them. Sinwaan did great. He was loading like a pro in no time. Then it was my turn to apply what Travis had showed me. I fumbled a little with the lead rope and whip and trying to hold it all and get him in but we did it and then once we had it down we did it trotting up and into the trailer as well. I am relieved to have that taken care of now. Well since that only took about 20 min Travis said we had time left and what else did I want to learn? He asked me about teaching a horse to sidle up to you to make mounting from a fence (or whatever) easier. That sounded interesting so I agreed. We took Sinwaan into the round pen and this time Travis showed me how to teach Sinwaan to sidestep over to me when asked by kissing at him, and then another tap on the hip with the whip. I was just blown away that it would be that easy to teach a horse to walk into a whip. By the end of our training session I was able to get him to throw his hip right over towards me and then sidestep over closer to where I was. I had a great experience and will definately use or reccommend Travis in the future.

After all that I was anxious to get out there and ride! I saddled up and noticed the time was 7:30 pm. Dale was not riding this evening as he is going out tomorrow morning instead. It was a bit of a challenge heading out between the road and the pasture as the water guns were all on down the fenceline and apparently Sinwaan had qualms about getting wet. WIth finesse and good timing we made it to the road crossing. We headed up Cache Hollow and noted two calves were out of the pasture again. We did a lot more trotting today and even had a truck come up from behind and pass us about 3/4 mi up. After the 1 mile mark and passing all the scary trash items we did some cantering and a lot more trotting. We made it up in record time. I would guess that all told we probably did about 3.8 mi today but I will have to take the truck up on Friday and find out for sure. We did some trotting coming down the mountain also, and for some reason I have noticed Sinwaan will be just fine (alert) going up the mountain, and coming down all sorts of things are out to get him and he is all over the road. One minute we are trotting in one lane and the next minute we are over in the other lane. But its not a big deal, he is at least pretty polite about his 'spooks.' We saw a lot of birds today, including a dead one in the road, and two bunny rabbits came out and hopped across the trail in front of us.

I do not know exactly what time we returned as I forgot to look, but I fed Sinwaan some grain and checked his feet and brushed his sweat marks, talked with Kittee a little bit and noticed I was in the truck heading home by 9 pm.

So I figure 3.8 mi in 1 hour. Not bad. At this rate I could probably do the 25 mi in 6 hrs, esp if it isn't all hills like what I am currently riding!

Sunday Dale and Kittee have plans to ride up to Tollgate, which is a 12.5 mi ride. They are talking about taking their truck/trailer up early that morning and then riding up, letting the horses rest and graze, and then trailering them back down. Sounds like a great way to start, I am looking forward to that.