We’ve been chugging along here, but I haven’t had anything interesting to post. So I haven’t. That said, we’ve finally had some adventures so back to blogging.

I’m determined to learn to trail ride. Nay Nay has big (very big) shoes to fill. Batt was the world’s best trail horse. And while I don’t think Nay Nay will ever fill those boots, he can at least aim to fit the role of “safe trail horse” or “fun and safe trail horse” or “we can go on a trail and have fun and go back to the trailer and not die trail horse,” right? Or at least that’s the goal.

But Nay Nay has opinions and I’m determined to work up to trail riding. I’m not taking him out, getting on, and expecting it all to go well. But I want to go work my way up to that so I can achieve success.

On Friday, I headed out to Fair Hill in the morning and bought my annual pass. First level of committing to I WILL LEARN TO TRAIL RIDE DAMNIT! And then hitched up my trailer, loaded up Nay Nay, and headed over to the park.

My goal? Get there, look around, and come home in one piece.

And while I had grandiose visions of riding, realistically, that was never in the cards.

We got there, parked, and Nay was fine until I opened the escape door at the exact moment that a pair of riders headed towards our trailer. Nay saw them and broke the trailer tie… but thankfully he walked out of the trailer like a gentleman. For all the crap he pulls, he respects the step up of my trailer and walks out slowly and respectfully. His eyes were popping out once off the trailer, but his feet were firmly on the ground. And despite the anxiety, he registered the clicker click.

After a moment of breathing, I grabbed my gloves (next time, gloves first, then horse), grabbed my whip, and off we went. We grazed for a while and then took up residence in the dressage warmup ring.

Goal there? Move our feet. We ended up lunging the entire way around the ring. I wish I could have recorded it. He looked fantastic. But we lunged at the trot, moving around as we went. Nay was definitely looky and very concerned about walkers and bicycles. LOL. But we did keep moving. I also forced him to lunge through a big puddle.

After we lunged to the left, I took him to the center to work on some other stuff when we almost died. Yes, death.

You see, we were in the center of the arena when 2 horses exploded out of the wood breathing fire (um, walked out of the wood and stood still). Nay basically started rearing and spinning when he saw them. I yelled my apologies to these ladies who thought I was insane with my crazy horse who I struggled to get under control… Eventually I did and they moved on.

We did lunge to the right, again around the arena, but it was less pretty (we also struggle to the right so we need to work that way). But, we got it done. After we worked on backing and regaining focus.

While we were backing I caught 2 horses walking towards us from the other direction. Not wanted to have another incident or destroy the ring again (I had just managed to stomp all of our foot prints/rear marks), I walked out of the ring and let Nay graze. Unlike the first pair, this pair called out hello to us and started chatting as they approached. Nay looked up, saw them, heard their voices, and let out a deep breath, and started grazing again. They stopped near us, chatted for 5+ minutes, and all was good. I think the calling out was biggest difference. It makes all the difference at home when my husband approaches and calls out. After they left, Nay wanted to follow, but he was happy enough to walk the other direction.

We ended up going on a 15-20 minute walk and explored the park. We chatted with a couple and their dogs and grazed as needed. We did some backs and halts when we needed to engage the brain and made good use of the clicker (carrots were a no, but nilla wafers were a yes). In the end, we headed back to the trailer and he was 1000% more confident than when we first headed out.