Day 11

11 February 2012
Today was supposed to be cold.  -20 degrees Celsius with the wind chill... Brrrr.  So I dressed up warm with heat packs in my toes and hands.  By the time I got to Arty I'd already ridden my mare and Miss L, the reining mare.  I figured both the pony and I needed an escape from the arena, so I popped on his trail gear and we tagged along with two others for a short (1 hour) trail ride through one of the local conservation areas.
Arty hacks in a hackamore (the type with a shank & curb chain) due to his poor trail training, his love of running and leading, and his immense pony strength.  Through the 10 minute walk down the road to get to the trails, he was bent right and drifting left.  Correcting this in a hackamore is more challenging, but I opened my right rein, asked for some left bend, and pushed HARD with my left leg. It sort of worked, but was better than anything else I tried.  He seemed to have lost all his arena training the moment we started down the road... not a good thing.
The ride itself was fun.  We walked a bit, did a tiny bit of trot work, a fairly long hand gallop (one of the horses [naturally the retired one] threw a bucking fit and took off) some more walking, and then some trotting & cantering through snow in fields.  It was gorgeous... perhaps more running and less trotting than I would have done but I was just along for the ride. (being a self-invited tag along and all)
I put my mare's old cooler (which I'd brought out for da pony) on arty when we got back as he had some sweat underneath his saddle area.  A 75' cooler on a pony who wears a 68 looks pretty damn cute.  I wished I had a camera for that one :)