Road Trip #4. What Could Go Wrong???

Sometimes you just have to roll with whatever comes your way….

We arrived at the 14 acre facility by 9am. A peaceful, sunny day. Except for the groundskeeper, we had the place to ourselves. This was the perfect set up for schooling a young green horse and letting  my daughter and her pony school some cross country jumps. So, how did it go so wrong?

OK maybe there were a few strong wind gusts showing up intermittently. And that groundskeeper, he may have pulled out a weedwhacker and decided that the area around our trailer needed immediate attention. I am guessing there was absolutely nothing else on the entire facility that he could work on at that moment.

Of course I didn’t even know he pulled out a weedwhacker. I was at the back of the facility about to longe my Dinosaur of a horse and my daughter was at the front setting jumps.

Dino spooked and bolted on the line.  I looked up to see a cute fat pony galloping straight for us-broken leather halter flapping below his chin. I was certain that this wasn’t going to turn out well.

Dino and pony are good buddies, but they play hard. They kick, rear and try to take each other down. So, you can imagine my fear at that monent. Scared baby Dinosaur say hello to galloping pony….yeah, this isn’t going well.

To my surprise, pony ran up to Dino, stopped and rubbed his head all over the top of Dino’s back and hind end. Poor little pony needed a bit of security! Weedwhackers do occasionally devour ponies I am told.

Feeling better, Pony then took off bucking and did something I don’t think I will ever see again. He ran to the cross country jumps and tried to stand his front legs on a hay bale- just like a circus pony. He was staring right at me too! He then took off and jumped a cross country jump. He was having a great time!

Since there were no other horses at the facility, I opted to just leave pony loose until Kelsey returned-a full 10 minutes later. What was I going to catch him with anyway???Occasionally pony would take off and buck getting Dino all riled up. But, the lure of green grass eventually  won out every time.

Needless to say, Dino was pretty freaked out after all of the commotion. It took a looong time and some more longeing before I was willing to get on and ride. Again, he gave me nothing spectacular, but he didn’t do anything dumb either. I consider that a success given how the day started!

Pony, however, went on to have a solid round of jumping some cross country schooling jumps with my daughter. He normally is the definition of bombproof-but certainly didn’t start the day that way!