golden

The color and quality of the light this time of year is just spectacular. On my ride yesterday I kept stopping and just admiring the colors. People think in California we're missing the seasons, and it's true that I don't see strands of amazing colored trees. But looking out at the deep blue lake, evergreen oak trees, beautiful golden grasses, red poison oak, it is a pretty picture.

golden trails: which way to you think he wanted to go? (hint, the ears are pointed towards home)

But I didn't get to take a picture there because Major wouldn't stand still. I thought I'd take him on a short trail ride, make sure that leg was doing OK, get back into it. He had other plans, mostly involving jigging all over. It started out nicely, including a few really nice canters and good trail manners. But he hadn't been out for awhile and is way too fit for him to find a slow 45-minute three-mile walk in the woods much of any exercise. He wanted to really stretch his legs, I wanted to make sure he was OK, so we argued a bit and ended up doing five miles in an hour, still mostly slow, much of it backtracking when we was being silly. He thought every time we turned towards home (we were on forest trails that circle all over) "Yeah, we're going home!" We were nowhere close to home. So the jigging commenced.

He is truly not as bad as some horses, he'll start jigging, I pick up one rein and put leg on to circle and he usually just turns his head, stops his feet and when he gives, I release. And after about 20 times he figured it out. His walk is faster than jigging and I don't nag him (I wish they'd figure that out!) I got a gorgeous fast walk home, GPS says about 5.5 mph. He just hadn't been out for too long, and had forgotten some manners. It was still a really nice ride, and his leg is fine. Coming home we trotted across a packed-dirt area, with a really cool shadow. When I stopped to take a photo, standing still is not as nice as the pretty trot image, and my horse looks pregnant!