My friend and I took Havoc and Lily out on a short trail ride today in the mid-afternoon. I had spent some time training Lily to get in my trainer’s trailer and we both needed a break. Although Lily loads fine into a slant load, she doesn’t like the looks of my trainer’s straight load two horse trailer. She also loads well into my stock trailer as long as there aren’t any horses in it. Nor does she permit any other horses to be loaded behind her. Since my stock trailer has no dividers, this means that a three horse trailer can only hold one horse.
Last year when I took Lily out on trail rides, she rarely wanted to stop and graze. She has relaxed a lot since then, or grown up a bit, because she now is quite eager to graze. Since I’ve done a lot of clicker training with her, I just click to her when I wish her to eat. She seems to really like trail rides now, and all the juicy grass, which is usually hard to come by in Colorado.
While we were out on the trail, we listened to the meadowlarks, and looked at the profusion of wildflowers. We ride on a ranch (slated for development, unfortunately) and most of it is open grasslands and rolling hills, overlooked by Pikes Peak. Our prize find among the wildflowers was a single, perfect wild iris. We didn’t see any pronghorns like we did on our last ride. It is still not unusual to see them west of I-25, despite the encroachment of suburbs.