The Brakes Work

A couple days ago, my neighbor friend, Val and I got together to ride in the evening.
Personally I won't ever turn down any opportunities to ride my horse out with a friend, but evenings are a little more challenging for my mare and I, because it's her dinner time and she knows it, too.
When I ride Baby Doll during the day, she is a much different horse, more willing to do as asked, quietly and without any complaints.

We're still working on her barn sour issues, but they have become much more manageable, mostly due to to my confidance level as well as my horse's trust in me and knowing that she can't get away with stuff like she used to a few months ago.
Her attempts at trying to get her way are always half-hearted and once I show her that I'm not going to back down, she just settles down and she does her job.

The other evening's trail ride was no different. Baby Doll did fine riding around our neighborhood, around the fields, and in the paddocks, within sight of my house (and barn).
But when we got out of sight of the barn, and were riding on the roads, she did some weaving towards the direction of our barn, which I corrected with some firm, but light leg pressure. She gave me a little crow hop, but then moved back onto the road, beside Scout and Val, and walked straight in the direction I asked. She behaved herself for the rest of our trail ride, only with a few looks of longing in the direction of her beloved barn.

Val had chosen to take Scout, her Appy/Paint/Arabian gelding for the ride, and I joked with her, that the last time Scout and Baby Doll traveled together, was when Baby Doll turned into a whirling dervish and had her first barn sour episode, before I was prepared to handle it.
So, I wondered what kind of adventures we'd have that evening.We rode around the fields and roads, uneventfully for a few hours together. We had a great time, as usual, just talking and enjoying the ride.

Then as we were making a circle around the 'back 40', two of our neighbors had gotten together, with their combined 6 dogs, to walk them back there, too.
Our horses aren't usually too bothered by these dogs, except one, a crazy weimaraner that is known for jumping out from bushes and antagonizing anything in it's path. And when he gets together with the other 5 dogs, loose, they have a wonderful doggie time causing chaos wherever they go.

Which is another reason I prefer to go riding during the day. The people with the dogs aren't home, and they don't take them for a walk until they get home in the evenings.

So, I bet you have a good idea where all this is going right?

Val and I saw the dogs and owners across a field and decided to turn down a different path to avoid them, but they caught up with us from behind. We could hear them behind us, yelling at their crazy, loose dogs, but we weren't nervous or alarmed. Val was even talking on her cell phone while she was riding. Baby Doll was calm. I was calm.

And then in a split second, all that changed!

Some kind of commotion happened behind and to the right of us. I felt Baby Doll's rear end tuck up underneath of her, and felt her shoot forward, a little like a rocket.
Now you have to keep in mind, I have never cantered or galloped Baby Doll, and only trotted a few times. Personally, I prefer walking, to moving fast on a horse, and my horse seems to like that just fine.

But all of a sudden my horse was flying, with me on her back. And it happened very unexpectantly and I didn't even know why.
What I did know was that I needed to get her under control fast.
My head and body went into auto-pilot, and I pulled the rein hard to the left.

She turned and came to a complete stop. (whew!)

And then we circled around to assess what had gotten my mare so frightened to make her feel like something was going to attack her from behind.

Val was working on Scout, who had also gotten out of control, caused by the commotion as well. Val's as tough as a rock, though, and had just calmly told the person on her cell phone that she had to hang up. If it had been me chatting on the cell phone, when my horse struck off like a bat out of hell, I think I may have ended up dropping that cell phone. lol!

Meanwhile the people with the loose dogs could see that our horses were prancing around and had been upset with the trouble their dogs had caused, so they didn't walk toward us, and stayed back, while trying to get their dogs back under their control again.

Apparently what happened was that their dogs had ran underneath the wire fence into the pasture, that one of our neighbors leases for his two horses. These are the two handsome boys, that I posted about a couple months ago.These two nutballs, were excited to have some dogs chasing them and decided it would be, oh-so-much-fun to invite our two horses into the chaos, by causing a hoof thumping, snorting, bucking and farting commotion as they ran up behind and beside us.

After I had gotten Baby Doll under control and we stood there to watch the two nutballs running, bucking and snorting, Val and I had to laugh when those silly hooligans turned to see if we were following them, then stopped, turned around, came running back, bucking and farting to the fenceline, and tried to get our horses worked up again.

I could feel that Baby Doll was seriously annoyed at those crazy boys for getting her so scared and worked up, so much that she wanted nothing to with them, and was happy when I turned her backside to them so Val and I could walk our ponies back down a different road in the opposite direction.

We rode around for another hour, until it started to get dark.
We talked about how we narrowly avoided a serious accident, and how well we both held it together. It made me feel really good when Val brought it to my attention, that I controlled my horse all on my own, and that I did a fine job, too.
She also reminded me that I did it using only my Dr. Cook's Bitless Bridle, and that now I know that I can truly stop and get my horse under control in an emergency.

I was also really proud of my horse, because she allowed herself to be easily controlled. She's a good level-headed horse, and even though she was scared and bolted for a minute, she seemed to realize that it wasn't the right thing to do. She didn't put up a fight when I asked her to stop and find out what happened. She trusted me that I wasn't going to let some monster attack and eat her. So, she stopped and we were able to end our ride on a good note.
The End!