The footing outside is frightful, so we all huddled inside for our last drill practice of the year. The start was rough with horses bolting, bucking, rearing ... and much of the culprit was the half open backdoor. My Q was one of the more composed of the eight horses but still had his tense “giraffe-neck” moments every time we passed the backdoor, or whenever one of the other horses would have a bolting fit. It was a tense warm-up. One of the horses, an OTTB-turned-jumper, was particularly anxious that morning. He was literally frazzled by our antics and his sweet rider was terribly tense at being such a bother. So our fearless rider placed her attention on her with some one-on-one coaching and then she barked at the seven of us to get into formation and start trotting while following our formation leader through serpentines, circles, changes in direction on the diagonal and through the center. Within 2 minutes all seven horses (and riders) settled and we passed by that...
There's nothing like the first ride in the snow.
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