First Ride at Home

Luek continues to settle in.  At the present time, he has inserted himself in between Flash and Tex in the pecking order.  He’s pushing Flash around a bit at the feeder so he may move up to alpha.  Flash, at 24, just doesn’t care about that stuff like he used to.

Both yesterday and today, Luek stood guard while Tex and Flash took a long nap in the sun.  I haven’t seen Luek nap or roll yet; he’s still very clean when I groom him.  He is thoroughly enjoying the big pasture water trough though.  I don’t know if he had a bucket or an automatic waterer at the barn, but here we have big deep water troughs.  He loves thrusting his nose into the water, almost up to his eyeballs, and then splashing water back and forth.

Since we brought him home two days ago, we’ve been hand-walking him around the ranch a couple times a day.  The first day was windy and cold, and he had his head high as we walked.  After that, he’s walked on a loose lead while we explore and hand graze.  We went on troll patrol in the dressage court, and he didn’t find any.

So today I hopped on him for a short ride.  We are both out of shape so we’re going to ease into this riding thing.  I’m a firm believer in riding for 20 minutes and making it count versus going around and around for an hour.

There is something about riding at home that is so good for the soul.  Maybe because I’m not worried about being in someone’s way; maybe its the sound of birds in the pines and oaks; maybe its the quiet that allows me to center, breathe and connect.  I don’t know why, but it just works.  We worked in the arena for about 15 minutes; mostly at walk but a bit of trot and canter.  We’re figuring each other out. And we had fun.