Enjoying the days of summer

Here is an example of just one of the many storms to come by this summer. What a great picture, two things I love in this world: ponies and storms :)

I hopped on Red bareback the other day while he ate grass, just to see what he would do. A pic is below. As you may have guessed, he didn't care. He wanted to go for a walk on the trail but finally relaxed and accepted the fact it was eat time, not ride time.

I also took Red all the way around the trail by himself for the first time this past weekend. He did great. He froze once when we saw several horses in a large pasture, but he got going again with a little encouragement.



But yesterday, Red and I had an exciting experience on the trail. I went with the neighbor girl and thank goodness, we had 2 out of control horses on the trail with screaming kids on them come flying by.

We heard screaming behind us and we thought it was coming from a house. Well finally cresting the hill behind us come these 2 horses at a full gallop. There are kids on them (~13 yrs old) and they are screaming, legs wrapped around the horses as hard as they can, leaning forward... all the wrong signals for "STOP". I yell to my neighbor to turn our horses around and face them, heels down, and grab mane. These guys fly by and our horses rear and spin around but that was about it. They were really good considering. So one of these kids grabs the reins of the other horse and she ends up getting pulled off her horse... what a mess. She was hurt, found out today she bruised her ribs. We walked her home where the horses were waiting. Red did not like being around those horses. We had to keep moving because he was very very nervous around them. After we got past them, he calmed right down again.

I thought "oh no" as I'm on this green TB, off the track since January, as these guys come galloping at us. But Red did well. Had I been by myself I don't think things would have gone as well so thank goodness for that.