Franklin Trail Ride

Yesterday was a good day, if not overly long. We started the day running late. I couldn’t get myself out of bed like I’d wanted. It was the Franklin Trail Ride. I had planned on riding Rain and King before the ride but never got around to it. The week before the ride was super busy and I didn’t get a chance to ride on the weekend. I prefer to pre-ride the horses before a ride to work the kinks out.

Sunday morning, I went out and did chores as normal and caught Rain and King. It’s not so easy to catch either one of them so there was a bit of a standoff between myself and King for a few minutes. But as always, he caved. I’m learning to really keep my zen on these horses. They can’t get the better of me.

I saddled up Rain and loaded both up. We headed up to Madison for the ride. We drove past the trail head to get to mom and dad’s. Dad had warned me the day before that Queen has been off her feed. So I was anxious to check her out while Dad saddled up King.

From a distance, Queen looked fine. She and Babe both needed a good grooming. They still had their heavy winter coats on. I figured when we got back from the ride to groom down both girls. I wanted to make sure that when I left Sunday that Queen was a bit happier.

So we loaded the horses back up and headed out to the trail head. There weren’t too many people there. Only about 20 riders total for the entire ride. The ride was on gravel so that deters most people. But I thought it was a nice ride. Rain behaved beautifully. King behaved ok, but not as great as I’d hoped. It may be that dad and I need to switch horses.

The ride was fairly short and we were done by about 4:30pm. We hung around for about an hour before heading back to mom and dad’s. We unsaddled the horses. When we turned around to go back the last two miles, Rain worked himself up into a tizzy. So when I pulled the saddle off he had sweat marks everywhere. I wish I could have given him a bath.

I then decided that I would go and baby Queen for a little while. I started grooming her down and got at least one layer of winter fur off her. Her mood did seem to improve while I groomed her. She really is a people horse and prefers to be handled at least once a day if not more than that. But I think she’s also not feeling well so I may need to come up with another solution. Improve her spirits and maybe she’ll feel better to eat. But we’ll see. I have a plan.

After I groomed her down, I decided to halter her up and lead her out into some of the lush grass. She can’t really be on grass a lot but I thought 10 minutes of grass might cheer her up. So I pulled her out and left her to munch. I went over to Babe and brushed her down too. I left about half a horse on the ground from all her winter fur. Babe really seemed to enjoy the grooming. She looks fantastic for coming out of this winter. I’ve never had her for a winter and she looks better now than when we first got her! Makes me happy!

I went back after grooming Babe and did a bit more grooming on Queen. The more loving on Queen the better. After a little bit, I pulled Queen back into her dry lot and fed her a treat. Maybe it was just my imagination but it did seem like her spirits were a little bit higher. I think I want to try some probiotics on her and see if that helps too. Since she’s not actually at Borderlands it’s a bit hard for me to pamper her and make sure she’s being treated like a Queen (no pun intended). So I’m going to have to call mom and dad up and change the care instructions on Queen.

After grooming the girls down, I loaded Rain and King and headed up to Winfred to pick up Sam. Sam came home on Sunday. WELCOME HOME SAM! I’ll blog about Sam in a little while. I want to get some pics of him too. I’m a bit upset that he’s so thin but I guess I can’t say much since Bob looks just as bad if not worse.

But to quickly sum it up, we loaded Sam up in the trailer (with a few head bonks) and then unloaded him in with Brego. I think Brego and Sam will get along just fine. I still have some reservations about putting those two together but those are the best matched personalities that I could come up with last night at 10pm. After we got everyone settled in for the night it was midnight before my head hit the pillow. I woke up with a terrible cold. So hopefully my blog entry won’t sound too confusing. And I’ll blog a bit more about Sam. Can’t wait to tell you all about Sam the Man.