Big Girl Panties

Well, that title should land me some nice Google search hits :) Won't they all be surprised when it is just a boring story about Gemmiecakes?

I had an amazing ride Thursday night. We didn't go far. We didn't go hard. We didn't go long. But we went somewhere new and it was all Gem's idea.

If horses wore panties, Gem would have had her big girl ones on Thursday night. She never ceases to amaze me. The arena is always busy on Thursdays and I generally avoid it and just go on Friday, but I have other plans and so Thursday it was. W was a super sleepy baby and went to bed at 6:30pm (he even slept in on Friday morning too) so I had some extra daylight to play with.

The hubs had surprisingly given the BM the green light to use Pete once a week and Thursday turned out to be his first ride. The girl on him is super nice and has a gelding who could be Gem's twin (only he is a Quarter horse and not an Arabian) in both looks and personality. I feel for the girl. Pete was a nice change of pace for her and afterward she was beaming and had a ton of fun. Go Wonderboy! I'm nosey even if my horse is not, so I took longer than usual to tack up as I watched Pete over her back. Sneaky, aren't I?

I decided that spying was more important than going off on the "trails" and so once I got up on her I steered her toward the grassy area next to the arena. I figured we could still get a decent work out in while getting a good view of the Pete action. Again, aren't I sneaky? Gem apparently had other ideas. The grassy area is bordered on two sides by the gelding pasture which is huge. I generally turn the area into a small arena and ride it in a circle like pattern and so we headed out toward the pasture with the plan to make a right turn once we reached the fence. Once we got there though, Gemmie strutted out through the gate and into the gelding pasture like we had done it multiple times before. Huh? I asked Gem where we were going and she just kept trucking out into the pasture. Ok. I'm game for that!

She rode super well out there. A little slow and look-y but we walked the perimeter without any major occurrences and then made our way back. If she became tense, I let her turn back toward her comfort zone and then slowly widened the oval back again the next pass. We made it almost clear down to the woods at the bottom of the pasture. Once down the hill I figured we could work on some hill work and so I asked her to trot back up to the top. She did, although she was tense and spooky at nothing. Once back to the top we turned around and went back down. I asked her to trot up again and this time she took off! We rushed up the hill at a 14mph pace and jumped over a small ditch in the process. It was a ton of fun!!! I did make her go back down and trot up again just to let her know she actually did have to listen, but man was that fun :)

All in all it was a great night at the barn :)