Sunday, March 20, 2011 - Ride Day with Brother at Riverbend Park

I promised to take my brother riding today, and we also discovered there was a local horse show at Jupiter Park, so we dropped off Hubby there so he had something to do, and brother and I went out to Riverbend Park to ride. Both are just a few miles from where we're staying, so it was very convenient. We parked at the equestrian trailhead and headed out about 2:30 or so, once again accompanied by a saddlebag of beer (prohibited by the park, but how am I supposed to stop my big brother?). Since my brother got a little frustrated by not being able to get Hubby's horse to canter last time, I decided to ride Hubby's horse and let brother ride mine, since I'd been working on getting him to do some really nice loping lately. I also wanted to see if I could get Hubby's mare to canter, since he hadn't had much luck with that lately, and I wanted to see if I could solve whatever problem she was having. The trails here are much nicer than at JW Corbett, as they are actually meant for horses, traveling along canals and rivers and around marshes, albeit pretty dry marshes, what with the lack of rain here. After about 45 minutes, brother wanted to take a break (woosie butt, not used to being on a horse yet), though partly because he was out till dawn this morning, after partying all night. I was a bit surprised he was even able to go riding today, he must have had a terrific hangover, but I guess the beer was the hair of the dog for him, and that's pretty much how he lives his life anyway, day after day, so I guess he's used to it. While we were stopped, a woman came by, (initially galloping until she saw our horses, who were jumping around when they saw her coming), and we ended up chatting for a time. Eventually she moved on and we continued around the west loop and the Hammock loop area. I didn't want to go all the way around, because I didn't think my brother could handle it, so we just did a bunch of short loops in the area, repeating ourselves and backtracking just to keep it interesting (I'm not sure he noticed how many times we were on the same trail, but we were RIDING, so what's the difference?) At one point, I found a nice straightaway to canter, so I got Clio going, and managed to get her into a canter without very much problem, though she had to get herself all the way up to a very fast trot before finally switching over. It wasn't a long straightaway, so it didn't last long, but when I got to the end, I looked back and say brother cantering along a ways behind me. He was flustered though, and told me Apollo had tried to buck him off when he went into his canter (not the slow lope I'd hoped for), reminiscent of his old trick of kicking up a time or two during his transition, something he used to do with me until I realized it was because I was holding the reins too tight. At least he managed to stay on, which was the important thing, and now he had a little excitement to add to his day! Got back to the trailhead about 5:00, then headed back to the other park to pick up Hubby, except he wasn't where we left him. In fact, there wasn't anybody at all there anymore. We kept moving, looking for signs of Hubby, until we saw a couple of horse trailers at the second arena (there's a grass arena and a sand arena), and found him reading his book on a bench there. We all headed back home, enjoyed the evening sitting around chatting for awhile in our "porch" (under the awning of the RV) before settling down to TV and bedtime. A pleasant day had by all!