Gia - session 540 - trail ride!

 I took Gia on her first trail ride today!  Danielle and I ventured out to the newest trail location, very close to our farm - Sandy Pines Preserve.  It was awesome!  They have wonderful parking spots for trailers, complete with ties and mounting blocks along the trail!

I was expecting Gia to be quite nervous, and despite that, I still decided to ride her without lunging.  Most of the time there isn't a good place to lunge a horse before a trail ride anyway.  Ali was with her, and he is brave, and she trusts him, so that helped a lot.  Her first scary encounter was when we had to cross a sidewalk to get to the trail.  She didn't want to walk on the pavement (most horses don't like when the ground changes in color or texture).  Ali had no problem walking past her, so after a few minutes, she nervously followed him.  There were random things that made her look, anxiously, along the way - benches, mounting blocks, rolls of fake grass in the ditches, drainage pipes, etc.  We saw a black snake alongside the path, and that didn't seem to bother her.  At one point, early on in the ride, a dog chased a fawn across the path right in front of her.  She backed up quickly, but only a few steps, and then was fine.  

As we went along, I focused on helping her to relax with little bends and leg yields and flexions.  It didn't take very long for her to feel comfortable enough to get into a nice, big walk stride (Ali had to trot to keep up), and I was able to let her go on a loose rein.  Eventually, we even trotted and cantered, all with no hints of bucking!  We did encounter a bridge that was quite scary.  Ali went first, but as soon as Gia stepped on it and it echoed under her big feet, she panicked.  She jumped up and down in place a few times, but not very high, and then she was fine.  All in all, it went WAY better than I expected it to go!