Fun NIGHT RIDE weekend with our Arizona Endurance Ride Club and my friend Ashley and her girl Libby.
The club did a learning event with a workshop for new night riders and then different teams of horses rode out into the park at sunset all lit up with glow sticks and headlamps on a trail marked with very small red lights hanging from bushes and trees in the McDowell Mountain park.
You can check out the video and see the red light off in the distance that we are riding toward positioned every few hundred feet on the trail. We rode from sunset into the night and the horses did a great job, leading and following and trotting and walking the trail without a single hiccup with only one exception.
At one point, Sandman was leading and we were only a mile or so out of camp and Sandman was head down very relaxed and focused in his power trot until of course, he spotted a super scary (for some only known horse reason) pile of horse manure in the trail and within a millisecond did a fast 180 to my right (because he always spins to the right) which I caught with my right leg mid turn and flipped him right back around but not before Libby in kind did her own half spook (monkey see monkey do), which Ashley caught immediately, but again, other than that minor team spook we had a very relaxing fun ride and it was a great experience for the horses.
Ashley, Lancette Koerner and Andrea did a great job organizing a fun and safe event for our club and the potluck dinner and the workshop and learning experience were well attended with great food and a lot of fun.
This was Sandman’s 4th night ride and we learned a lot about solar powered lighting and Ride With GPS that is going to be very useful in the next rides we do.
The BIG homerun on top of the drama free night ride was that Sandman didn’t spook at the trailer when we first mounted up. For some reason during the last few rides, he spooked when mounting at the trailer so this past week, I did religiously every day, 15-20 mount ups, stand for 30 seconds, ride a short distance, and then dismount and wait a few minutes, walk around and then mount up again. I did this training sequence 15-20 times for an hour or so every day and I think it worked, as he was quiet as a mouse and stood rock still mounting up this past weekend. All in all a great training weekend.
Enjoy the ride, this was a good one 🙂