New Year Days ride

["Karen Sullivan" <greymare@jps.net>]

The kids and I found a break in the rain to get the horses out for an hour
or so.  Due to time constraints, we went to the same hill I had done
Christmas Eve. My son surprised me at the last minute by wanting to
come...he hadn't ridden since summer, but I found out later the kids had an
ulterior motive.

Connor got walkie-talkies for Christmas, and so they tried them out while
riding.  Connor was on his pinto Arab/mustang, Brenna on her ARab Breeze, I
was on the green Anglo Arab (who is getting less green), we had the 2 year
old Fawn following loose, and Poopie, the Australian Cattle Dog.

Taking into the Walkie-talkies soon got boring, so they experimented making
awful noises and holding them up to the horses ears.  Once the novelty of
that wore off, they tried barking commands, like TROT and WHOA  into the
horses ears by walkie-talkie.  My poor horses obediently took off at a trot
when it squawked into their ears.  Let me tell you, here is nothing like
kids riding your horses, to get them dead broke and bombproof.

Brenna took off at a canter on Breeze amd left us, while Connor walked with
me; and the green horse handled that well, so it was a successful ride.
Anyway, I can add walkie-talkies to the many things my horses are now used
to!
Karen in Lake Co.