Maggie and I and the Beck dog are off to the water trail alone for the first time. We've done short solo rides close to home around the neighborhood, maybe 4 times now. It's time to try the longer ride into the dam. Maggie is 6, she is saucy at times still. It's 7 am. On the brink of being scorching summer hot. My goal is to get down the snaking path, through the woods, through the water, back safely and happily.
At the bottom of the big rocky mountain I see an old trail buddy on her horse and so my plan of going solo is overlapped with one and then 2 old buddies as they police escort Mag and me through the tunnel, up the hill and then down the hill into the first part of the water trail. I like catching up with them, I never ride with them anymore because I'm a renegade, so it's good to see and talk. But then we pass the overgrown trail that I want to take and I feel a little sick, because that's what I came to do, not to follow along on the old lady rideathon that it's looking like it'll be.
"I'm gonna go do that other trail, and see how she does alone," I call out to my friends, who are already ahead. I have no idea if Maggie will have trouble leaving the other horses. Luckily we have the dog for company, I call to her and we turn back and head down the haunted wood trail all overgrown that we've done plenty of times with Dewey ponying behind us.
Maggie is perfect on the trail. Once we get to the water, she suddenly realizes that maybe she should call to Dewey and tell him she's alone and where is he. The calling makes me nervous because you can feel every muscle in her back tense to talk to him. All those muscles could then decide to tense and jet rocket me forward as she runs crazily toward home. If she thinks of that. And decides that.
I relax my body and keep my tension in my torso, where she can't feel it. I lengthen my leg, and wiggle my toes and scratch her neck like I'm not worried at all.
We get through the water, and she calls a few times, and she has a little excitement in her feet, so I turn her in a few circles, and aim her slightly sideways to take the forward speed out of her step, and I allow her forward, and we canter up the hill because she can't get away from me with the gravity of the hill helping hold her back, but I can get out her energy.
She is actually fine all the way home. I just am more aware of her quicker step because we are alone. She listens, she turns, she calls a little to Dewey, but she doesn't run away. She stays with me and Becky. She stays, she's mine, she says. Bossy, but mine.
We get on the secret path to home, she calls to Dewey and he calls back. I see in her ears, she smiles to herself, her boys are there in the barn, just like she left them.
She gets a carrot, she gets rinsed off, she wins the first long ride out, missing her buddy but not leaving me in the dirt.
Next time it will be better, because we are through the first, and the rest is just building blocks.
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