We survived our first trail ride! She was very looky and very 'up' and I'd be lying if I said everything went completely smoothly, but I will say that even my barn owner is quite impressed with Miss Ruby.
I had to be on the road to pick my kids up from school by 1:45 pm, so I didn't have time to lunge Ruby before our ride. After doing bare minimum barn chores, we loaded up and got to Tenoroc around 10 am. Unloaded ponies - Ruby was alert but willing to graze so I set up her bag of hay and got down to grooming. About 45 minutes later, we were ready to hit the trail.
Before we even got to Tenoroc, Heather told me that I would have to read the map because she always got lost out here. No worries, I have a decent sense of direction most of the time, and I can get down on a map. As we left, I turned on Strava (amazing phone app that tracks your path and mph) and off we went. We decided that we wanted to take the trail to the right (according to the map) because it looked like the shorter trail - a complete guess because the map did not show the trail miles - so we went the way the map said we should go...It wasn't long before we came upon a place where some wild hogs had been rooting - both Candy and Ruby were sure they were horse-eating hogs. It took us about 20 minutes to go the next 100 feet. There was lots of sideways, some backing, lots of stopping and looking but eventually we made it through - the great thing was that after this first area, the girls would march right through the hog rooting areas, success! We went another mile or so when Ruby decided that forward was too scary so she was going to start backing - holy crap are my legs going to be sore tomorrow! It took kicking, kissing, clucking, slapping with the reins and even two hard smacks on the butt to get her moving out again - but when she did start moving, wow. She has a super-walk so fast that even when Candy was power-walking she was being left behind. We had no more trouble with forward movement after that, now the problem was waiting for Candy and Heather. She did have a few mini-fits, usually when asked to stop, but nothing major. I think she spooked three times, two were freeze spooks, the last one was a run-straight-sideways spook. I'm lucky I stayed seated on that last one - it was fast! And once I accidentally stopped her in a fire ant bed. I couldn't figure out why she was stomping and getting a little crazy when Heather said it looked like she was being bitten by ants. I felt like such a jerk, I'm just not used to watching for ant beds while riding. I hopped down and wiped them all off, and all was well.
Around noon, I started getting worried that maybe we wouldn't make it back on time - especially because there were a lot of optional trails that were not on the map, grrrr. Anyway, eventually Heather recognized the trail and we made it back - note to self: either Ruby was happy to be out or she has a horrid sense of direction because she didn't seem to recognize when we turned down the trail back to the trailer. By the end of the ride, I was convinced that it wasn't Heather's map-reading skills that had gotten her lost - it had to be the map. The first turn we made should have been on a trail taking us on a big loop to the left, but we'd been turning right the whole way. After we got the girls loaded, I checked Strava against the map. Turns out that the trail we took matches exactly to the longer trail on the map - the part of the map that seems to be screwy is how to get to the trails.
Anyways, I am very impressed with Ruby. We had a few discussions, but that's to be expected. I think she has a ton of potential as a trail and endurance horse. I kept expecting her to get tired during the ride, but it just didn't happen. We were riding for nearly two hours and rode 6.1 miles - it felt like a ton more than that because of all the stopping and training moments, and because I'm so ridiculously out of shape. I've got to start working on myself too. Next week we might be going to Alafia to ride with Jennie - crossing fingers!
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