We go it alone

Team Tucker

I was out of town for three days so I had to ride Tucker today no matter what!

I couldn't get a hold of my friend so I tacked up and cruised around the back acre. Tucker was very happy when he saw we weren't going into the big pen to use it like an arena.

Then, I went up front and cruised around the big circular driveway.

Then, I decided it wouldn't hurt to open the gate with my handy automatic gate opener button.

Well, I decided to go get the mail. Then, to go up 10th street. Then, it wouldn't hurt to go across the desert trail, now would it? Pretty soon I was at my friend's house.

At first Tucker didn't want to listen very well although he is not a really bad horse. He wanted to turn into a neighbor's driveway and he was looking everywhere craning his neck to watch for things.

I steered him around a couple of puddles but tried not to nag him. I got him on the trail where he needed more guidance and needed to pay attention to me. That helped some.

My friend was home. I stopped to talk to her. TUcker started calling and calling to Brownie so I said "Great, you holler, I turn you in a big circle." Everytime he hollered I did a big circle. Pretty soon it wasn't a priority for Tucker to holler :)

Tucker and I tried some new things like multiple downed limbs and stair steps up between tires trail. We did the pond which he did pretty well at. The super narrow bridge which is a metal loading ramp that is just 6 inches off the ground. He decided to try it after some approach and retreat and then following Brownie. It was rough the first time. We got half on, half off. We managed to abort the mission and the second time went just fine.

I do have some rein management issues but honestly did pretty good. Tucker did well at trying new things although he needed to see Brownie do it first on a couple of the obstacles.

My friend showed me how to break the gate opening down into smaller steps. She opened and closed her gate and the Tucker only had to get maneuvered around to open it and stand there next to it. I managed to get Tucker to step to the end of the gate, we turned while I held the gate. I let it go and it opened itself. That was a big enough step for today.

We walked the horses back to my place. We had llamas run up to the fence at the blue house. Tucker was taking a good look but didn't seem bothered. We talked to someone on the road while more llamas showed up on the fence line. Tucker looked and looked but didn't seem bothered.

I managed to close the gate to the home pen. Wasn't pretty but it is safer to get off the horse with the gate closed [I didn't try to chain it closed it is just with the visual effect of the closed gate there is no temptation for the horse to bolt through it for whatever horse reason while I have one foot in the stirrup and trying to finish getting off].

That was about 2 hours and 15 minutes on horseback today. Maybe more.

PS -

My Tucker. So far, it's all been okay although he likes to look around a lot! It got us into trouble on the trail my first time out alone. He insisted we go right. I wasn't so sure. I didn't whoa him soon enough. We ended up on the holey side of the trail. His back foot went into a rabbit hole. He was calm as a cucumber. I paused for a bit and then said "Well, gues we better get out of this mess.. Let's go." He got us both out of there.