Part 2: my cell phone is a naughty little beast.

After I got home from the track, I was all "I'm gonna go ride my racehorse!" so I headed straight to the barn and tacked up. Honestly I was feeling more like going exploring on the trails than anything else, so that's exactly what we did. Lulu was happy to be out and I found myself pondering how I ended up with such a brave, willing trail partner. She has truly exceeded all of my expectations as a trail horse and I love that so much about her!

I had put my cell phone in the back pocket of my jeans, instead of taking the extra time to put it in the special cell phone holder I have that clips to my belt and is very sturdy/secure. We zigzagged around the trails for about two hours, and investigated an expansive neighbourhood that loops around behind the barn. I personally am a big fan of walking horses, especially young horses, through busy neighbourhoods. You've got the dogs barking at you. You have kids running around everywhere. You have bicycles, skateboards, and lawnmowers buzzing around. Basketball hoops loom overhead, ready to fall down and eat your pony. It is a virtual nightmare of potential death scenes for a horse at first, but give it some patience and you will have this:

That, my friends, is a happy horse on the buckle, plodding around the neighbourhood like an old pro. This is after we had already passed the barking dogs, basketball hoops, skateboards, lawnmowers, bicycles, and about 15 kids who wanted to come say hi, all with no issues. Oh, she also pooped on someones lawn but she had already made friends with them so they were very gracious about it (sorry about that, though!).

I was very happy with her.

We meandered around the neighbourhood for a while and then headed home. Once back on the trail, I let her open up a bit. We got almost back to the barn when I noticed that my back pocket felt...empty.

My cell phone had jumped ship! Oh I was SO MAD!

Dejectedly, I turned her around and back we went in the direction that we came from. I didn't see the cell phone on the trail so we went back into the neighbourhood. Everyone was still outside in their yards and they all turned to look at me like, oh, back so soon? I explained I had lost my cell phone and almost immediately, three boys jumped into action on their bikes and volunteered to go check the neighbourhood quickly to see if they could find it. How cool is that? They zoomed around and came back saying they hadn't found it. I decided to walk Lu down to where we were just after I took the photo above, because obviously I had the cell phone still with me at that point. I didn't see it anywhere, either, so then I decided to go back to the trail to try one more time. All of the kids were like, oh, maybe we can find it! So they checked with their moms (I didn't want any moms mad at me for luring their kids into the forest, you know) and they all came along. One girl brought her cell phone and called my phone repeatedly so we could try and hear it ringing. All of a sudden, I heard it! And there it was, stuffed quite snugly inside a bush on the side of the trail. Oh what a bad, bad phone. I am just glad I had it on ring and not silent! I don't think I ever would have found it!

So thanks to the help of basically an entire neighbourhood of people, I found my phone and from now on I will be diligent about using the holder I have for it that clips to my belt! Today's trail ride definitely goes down in the books as one of the most memorable ones! And that, my friends, is why this blog is titled "The Adventures of Lucy".