Moose Spitt Farm

So it's been a while (think three months or so) since I've actually ridden my horse, Sky.  I know, I know.  That's not good, is it?  But circumstances and weather were not being exactly ride-friendly to this girl.  We had been boarding at a friend's house since I bought Sky last September.  I bought a new saddle and some other tack but hadn't found a saddle pad/blanket that I liked.  My friend was kind enough to loan one of hers when she wasn't using it.  It was great, as it was the perfect size and already broken in.  But when we moved Sky out to the new farm, the blanket couldn't come with us.  So I've been searching, staring, dreaming, wishing for a good saddle pad so we could resume riding.  Well, yesterday, I finally bought one.  It's a Weaver basic pad.  Nice and well-made but without any specialty or extra stuff.  Today, we tried it out.

And I must say, today's ride was a complete success!  

I was a little worried, as he doesn't do all that well after not working for a while. But he was a perfect gentleman. Well, right up to when I was ready to dismount! Then he started jigging a bit. But I walked him a bit more and he calmed down enough for me to call an end to our session. I also lunged him a bit before saddling him up. He did really well at that, also! What a smart boy! :) 
Another concern is his gaits.  You see, Sky is a Tennessee Walking horse.  He's supposed to be gaited.  He's supposed to have a nice, smooth running walk.  However, my boy?  Well, he likes to pace, instead.  And let me tell you, there is no other gait in the whole world that is worse to attempt to ride than a pacing one.  Ugh.  So I started researching ways to work with him to improve his running walk.  While searching for info, I stumbled across a neat little site that talked about things you can do to work with your walking horse to help smooth out their gait!  Little exercises, if you will.  One mentioned an old tried and true method of utilizing a hill.  And since our yard has a great hill, we were able to work on his gait a bit too. So we walked down the hill, nice and slow. At the bottom, we turned and then worked into a running walk back up. Lemme tell ya. If you've ever ridden a trotting horse or a horse that paces (shoot me now!!!), try out a gaited horse! Wowee!!!! I never realized how smooth Sky's walk really could be! *huuuuge grin* Looking forward to getting him sacked out a bit more so I can actually go places with him!  He's still a little twitchy.  But that's a story for another time!

Here's a picture of my boy after our ride!  You can see the sweat marks there.  He seemed very happy to be doing something.  But then he was also very happy to go back into his field and resume scarfing down everything in sight! ;)