A Fine Ride

I had a lovely ride on Cinch last night. A lot of times when I go over there after work, between work insanity and rt 3N traffic (Northern MA-NH people probably know what I'm talking about) I'm as jittery as a meth junkie... but yesterday I was relaxed. He was *up*, but it was fun.

I had left work about 15 minutes early, picked up a chocolate cake at Demoulas (their cakes are surprisingly yummy) as a good-bye gift to our barn manager, and took back roads to finally get there around 6:30.

I should have organized it sooner, but with a number of people off at the Quarter Horse Congress earlier this week, things just didn't gel.

I'd bought a big cake, and though I'd tried to get a few more people to come over, the workday logistics didn't work. We couldn't wait until today, because Sydney's last day is today, a half day. :( She's moving back home to Maine for personal reasons - we all love her and are going to miss her.

Anyway, Sydney, the barn owner Frani, my friend Angel and I ate cake,  and she still had 3/4 of a cake to indulge in for breakfast and during the morning. It was a really good cake. :)

After that, and feeling a bit bloated (I wonder why?) I went to see Cinch and Tico, having decided to blow off riding, just clean them up and spoil them a bit. It was getting late, and the barn closes at 9.

Once I started brushing Cinch though, I thought... what the heck?

I tacked him up and as we walked out into the indoor Angel said, "He's probably going to be a bit goofy - remember, he hasn't been ridden since Sunday." The trainer had also been out at the Congress, so Cinch hadn't gotten any kind of work for a few days.

Well, last Saturday was a similar "first ride in a bunch of days" situation (I'd missed that Thursday, they'd gone out to Congress on that Tuesday) and he'd spent most of our first canter circle boinging along like Pepe Le Pew before he settled down. Just a teeny bit of pent-up energy.

I'm happy to say that I felt quite safe despite the somewhat unorthodox forward motion - I kept his head away from his ankles and he just canter-boinged happily until it settled to a plain canter.

Last night I figured that was a possibility...and when I got on him it was definitely to sit on a horse looking to stretch his legs.

The thing about quarter horses: they are built for impulsion.  They have super-duty rear-ends, and Cinch's maybe bigger than most :)  They aren't really built for suspension typically, but Cinch - unlike Tico - has quite a bit of that as well.

So, after barely settling into my western saddle, he was off. We powered around that ring in a very extended trot, which was actually pretty easy to sit as long as I let my back do what it needed to do. It felt so much like we were doing a "dressagy" trot rather than anything approaching a western jog, I thought... I'll ask him to leg yield.

And so he did - from one side of the ring to the other, big strides, big movement, lots of suspension, lots of impulsion. It was a blast!

After about ten minutes of that, I brought him back to a walk, and we did more western-type stuff. Our canters still started out zoomy, but no extra bounce to them.

I really think some of my dressage-riding friends would have a blast on that red horse of mine.  Anyone want to drop by, bring their (wide-tree) dressage saddle, hop on the big boy and see what he's got?