last night's trail ride

 I had a super ride last night. Lucy and I left around 5pm and jumped all the little redneck jumps I built out in the woods, zipping through the trails and in general having a blast. Then we explored the trails a bit on the buckle. Lately she has been more bloodhound than horse, walking along the trails with her nose on the ground, sniffing everything. It cracks me up! I don't know what she's smelling but it must be very interesting.

We crossed the two wooden bridges to get over to the boat launch, but instead of going in the water we continued past it and trotted toward the sports fields, where I like to have a little hand gallop around the perimetre of the practice areas. I didn't think about there being practice now that school has started up again, and the whole place was packed with minivans and small children running around. Unfortunately I couldn't go back the way I came because it's a very small one-way road and I didn't want to come face-to-face with a car so we had to walk past a bunch of kids who were waiting for a practice to begin. There must have been 25 kids and of course they all swarmed Lucy. Lucy is usually really good about this type of thing, probably a product of being handled so much at the track, and so I let them pet her with about 15 warnings to watch their feet. They were all so excited and they asked lots of questions (Lucy's name, how old she was, what she ate, how much she weighed, how fast she ran...typical kid questions). Lucy stood like a rock and let them stroke her face, neck, and shoulders. She was nothing short of a superb OTTB ambassador. The moms were thrilled with her bell boots (which is a common thing, and I think it's so funny) and the dads were mostly interested in my eventing vest lol. One of them asked if it was a kevlar vest.

On the way home we took a tour of a little neighbourhood that is really cute. It's right off the trails and I like taking Lucy down there so she can stay comfortable with cars passing her, because we never ride on the road at this current barn. A few cars passed her and she was fine about it, and then at two different houses, big dogs came running at us from the yards, barking and growling. That really scares the crap out of me because I have no idea if there's an electric fence underground that will stop the dog, or if it is going to keep on coming and attack us. Really scary! I was much more freaked out about it than Lucy was - she just calmly watched them run at us and didn't even flinch! Luckily both dogs stopped short of the street - they must have had electric fences.

When we got back to the barn, we jumped a pile of logs in the XC area, jumped up the step into the ring, jumped a few little jumps in the ring (some bending lines and a roll back) and called it a night. She was SUPER.