Today was very interesting... It has been a while since I went riding, despite the warm weather lately. I've been fighting a horrible cold for the last few days and didn't feel up to going out until today. So I went out there, relishing in the sounds of water dripping and mud squishing under my Ropers.
Tango refused to walk through the gate nicely so I had to bribe him with a bucket of oats. I would shake it and he'd take a step. It went well for a while until Tango got the bright idea to grab the bucket. He grabbed one side of the bucket in his teeth, thus commencing a game of tug of war. Finally I won and he came onto the concrete pad where I groom him.
Shedding Tango out in itself was an interesting endeavour. You know spring + horses = hair everywhere! However I was excited because as I was shedding him out more and more Tango's coat is getting whiter, he's going to be sooooo pretty (not that he wasn't pretty before).
Anywho back to the point of our story. I got him saddled and we went out to the rode. I decided that now that it was spring it was time to work of the cute little hay gut Tango had developed which means? If you guessed trotting, trotting and more trotting, then you guessed right. So we climbed the hill out of the valley onto the gravel/ mud range road. I'm not sure how far we trotted but he did well with no arguments..... until we turned around to go back.
It took a while for him to realize that we weren't gonna, trot, full tilt back to the barn so he finally settled into a high gear walk. He started getting fidgety and I didn't understand why. His head started bobbing and he kept looking back. Then when I went to adjust my seat in the saddle he jumped and turned really fast. I put my leg on to turn him back down the road towards home. I was quite impressed with him though, because he executed the prettiest sidepass I had ever seen.
We got back on track and we were just a little down the laneway when I heard my dad driving up behind me. Because I was always taught to face a vehicle when on a horse I turned Tango. He didn't really care about the van and we completed a turn on the haunches. I thought it was all good but as dad drove off in front of us he went, as my dad said later, "snake".
It all happened quite sure and I'm not sure why it happened. One second I was sitting in the saddle, the next I was in the air and grabbing for the horn to keep from falling off. When I realized what he was doing I whirled him around in some tight circles until he put his head down and slowed his walk. We walked back to the barn and got unsaddled.
It really wasn't that bad of a ride. However I was puzzled for the better part of the evening after that. Finally I gave up on trying to figure out what had caused Tango to blow his top (it really wasn't that bad). I guess the official diagnosis is... Spring Fever.
