kirkcudbright | moving ponies

Moved 3 of the pwnies from the Ponderaia to their new home last weekend. I led out on Ofeigur because I know the trails better than anyone else. (Not bragging, but I personally entered 95% of the trails in the 3500 acre Harold Parker State Forest into OpenStreetMap myself.) Not that the route was complicated - go to the parking lot, cross the street, go through the campground, find the trail going north, and follow it straight to the driveway to the farm. The hardest bit is right at the end - fording the Skug River where it's about 4' wide and 18" deep; that took about 10 minutes last time, and once Stjarni did it, everyone else did it.

Repeat this weekend with the last of the 4 icies. (Owner had a cold last weekend and couldn't make it.) I was on Burner, a very tall QH, and Margrethe was on Falki, a very short Icelandic. All was well until we got to the fording point, where Burner was all kinds of NO. Maybe 15 minutes of trying to get him to cross, then I dismounted and another 10 minutes trying to lead him across. No, nope, non, nyet, nay, hell no. So we bushwhacked a couple hundred feet upstream to where the neighbors have a bridge, and Burner was still full of the no. But Falki was willing, with his human in front, and me behind with a crop. Even then, it was another 5 minutes before I could convince Burner to set foot on the bridge. Sigh, it's times like this I really miss Gemini. Anyway, needless to say, the return trip was faster and less dramatic.

So big props to Margrethe, who was a trooper through all this. I didn't realize until she mentioned later, but this was her first trail ride without

lyonesse, her riding instructor. At the end of the first trot, she asked me to slow it down a bit, and it turns out that Burner has a lovely western jog that's well matched to a tiny icie tolt/trot/whatever he was doing at the time. But other than that, no complaints, even about Burner backing into her pony attempting to avoid the big scary river.

Done.