Trail blazing

Today is only the second time since Charlie's been at the new barn that I have gotten the chance to ride him. It being a gorgeous day today (and myself feeling rather confident and adventurous), I decided what the heck, let's go on a trail ride! Now, I have no idea if Charlie has ever been in the woods or on any kind of trail not to mention the fact that we'd be going alone but I really needed the trail ride so after doing barn chores I tacked up and out we went.

Trails? I'm not so sure about that...

Our first trick was just getting to the trails: you have to walk down this fairly narrow downhill path, only 20 feet or so, but it is sandwiched between the side of the ring and trees. Charlie didn't care so much that it was skinny on the sides but he really didn't like the narrow strip he had to walk on because there was a rain-made gully and exposed rocks in the middle (obviously very scary). So he balked and backed up and eventually walked right into the pricker bushes that are higher than his withers and tried to plow through them instead. I made him back up as there was no room to turn around and after dismounting to pull all the branches from his tail I hand walked him down the path. Not so scary after that.
Now the problem was getting back on my 16.2 horse. I'm only 5'2" so there was no way I was doing it from the ground. I kept walking, past another scary area with water on both sides, until I found an old concrete pillar to stand on. Charlie had no problem standing still while I clambered up on the block and then onto his back. Good boy!

Photographic evidence!

We walked around the woods for 30 minutes or so, just trying different trails I knew would keep us close to home. When we encountered one trail that was flooded from all the recent rain and Charlie didn't want to walk through it I didn't push him. My goal was to make this first outing as positive an experience as possible. I didn't want to start a fight that might be difficult to finish alone, nor did I want him to associate going out with something bad. This was supposed to be confidence-building so I tried to stay as non-reactive as possible but still get him to do something I wanted, even if it wasn't what I initially had planned. I had him get as close as I could (eventually backing him to the scary area and then making him turn around to face it), until he realized he couldn't run away from it and stood there calmly for 10 seconds without trying to back up or scare the swamp monsters by snorting at them. Then we turned around and walked away.

Going home I wasn't originally going to let him trot but he was being very respectful so I let him out a little and we had the most comfy floaty trot ever (it helps when your horse is trying to make himself bigger haha). We walked back up the scary entryway by the ring without incident, around the cross country course looking at all the jumps we would one day be doing ourselves, and I had a quick trot and canter in each direction around the outdoor ring (another first).

Working in the outdoor ring

Mission accomplished.

I did it!