There were plenty of lovely moments during our few days there, including moonlit evenings by the fire while clouds scudded across the nighttime sky. Wendy and I shared some very good bottles of wine over those evenings, a great way to wind down after what were activity filled days.
We had some very good moments with our horses; three stand out for me. The first came after playing with Maverick all of Friday morning. We decided we would take a trail ride with Walker and Bingo in the afternoon and let Maverick rest. I wasn’t sure Mav would like being left behind, but we decided to see what would happen.
We asked John, Wendy’s husband, to hang with Mav as we left, so he would at least have some human company. He seemed fine at first, but the further away we got, the more agitated he became, whinnying and running up and down the fence line. Even Walker whinnied back to Maverick as we disappeared from view through the trees lining the trail.
We made the choice to go back to get Maverick. After talking about it for a bit, we decided we would take him with us at liberty, knowing we would not be out too long, maybe 40 minutes or so. We really could not pony him since he is so dominant over Walker and Bingo, he would just end up pushing one or the other around, not something either Wendy or I wanted to deal with under saddle.
Maverick initially followed pretty closely to us as we headed up the trail that splits the Doghouse Ranch property. It wasn’t long before he started to wonder off the trail, weaving in and out of smaller, tighter trails, live oaks, holly and scrub brush. Wendy likened it to taking a dog for a walk off leash, so that the dog ends up doing three miles to your every one.
Maverick did at least twice the distance we did on Walker and Bingo. When we got to a large open area, we stopped to let them eat a little grass, and then headed back. Maverick really wandered off trail on our return leg, getting as far as 30-40 yards away from us at one point, though we could see him clearly through the trees.
He was completely enjoying himself, ears forward with lots of energy. As soon as we got closer to the house, he joined back up with us as we walked back to the paddock. Our path took us past our cars, trucks, trailers and a stand of trees. Maverick chose to take the tightest squeeze between two tree trunks, amazing Wendy and me with his further display of bravery. What a fabulously fun outing!
More to come…
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