Trail rides and farm rides

So Saturday, I ended up just riding Kieran all over the farm. We went up the driveway to the house (trotting uphill every time we came to it, to work on building up muscle), up around behind the garage toward one end of the trail in the woods, back down the driveway out toward the neighborhood (with a pause by the mailbox to see what he thought. No problem.) Back down toward the barn, along behind it to the hay barn. Back up to the front of the barn, around the big pasture....you get the idea. We went everywhere except in the woods (we were riding alone, I figured I'd better not push it :) ).

Kieran was a gem. Didn't care when we were riding alongside his pasture and his buddies were looking at him like "wtf are you doing there?". Didn't care (much) when we were riding along the big field and a couple of horses went running in the other direction (wanted to trot, but didn't push it when I said no).

Really, he did good and one of my big criteria in a horse was one I felt safe riding on alone and...I do.

Sunday, a big group of us went to Patuxent State Park, right up the road, for a trail ride while the weather's still nice. Kieran actually ended up leading the way (with Christine right behind me telling me which way to go since I don't know the trails ;) ). Christine commented he makes a good lead horse for a trail, he doesn't go too fast and he doesn't go too slow (and he's careful and pays attention, but he's not overly reactive or anything). We had someone with us trying out some horses he's thinking to adopt, and the ride went well so hopefully he will ('cause the rescue is overfull at the moment).

So that was my weekend, how was yours?

Oh, and here's a pic of Kieran all tacked up on Saturday wondering when we're actually going to get moving. ;)