YNP : Dude Riding
All this week we've been riding the dude horses again and again. Dude horses are fun and all, and they have some great trails, but eventually you learn after riding the same trails over and over again on horses that are trained to follow the horse in front of them, you are rearing for something a bit more.
Regardless, we made the most of it. And overall, I had a lot of fun, sometimes even getting the opportunity to practice wrangling. That can be amusing at times, as we have a bunch of wranglers on dude horses acting as guests may potentially act (read: complete idiots)
As a Side Note: Today was our first live trail ride and our guests were fantastic.
Anyway, getting on a wrangler horse is better then being on the dudes, because Wrangling horses actually react to you.
But the Dudes tend to grow on you too.
Up early one morning, I found Ug (the big guy in the center) surrounded by the Pony Mafia. The ponies always hang out with Ug. He's just this big horse that's pretty mellow and mostly just sits there chillin'. I've grown a soft spot for Ug.
THis is Eric, he's one of many dude horses that I'm still trying to tell apart. In fact, I still can't pick him out from a couple of the other Bay dude horses. But he's a good horse, very reliable, you could put a kid on him and not have many worries.
A lot of the Dude horses are like that.
Jose isn't quite to that point however.
Jose is a cool little horse, he's actually pretty well behaved at first, but as the trail ride progresses he tends to get a little frustrated and throws his head a bit. But overall he's a good horse. They were going to have him be a wrangling horse but he works better in the dude line.
He's pretty sweet too. He's one of my favorite Dude horses.
The trail is pretty scenic, and there's something about seeing a place like Yellowstone on the back of a horse. It's just part of the history and culture of this park.
Meanwhile, on one of our dude rides, as a pure joke, all the available wranglers decided to take Ponies out.
We have a bunch of ponies here. What's more, they're really not for kids, their more for adults, these guys are halflingers and they are cute little guys, but you can tell they're looking for trouble.
They just have that look about them.
I grabbed a halflinger named Bull. He's an old guy, but he's still got spunk. But he's well behaved, he will not deviate from that trail.
So all of us on Ponies (with the exception of the wranglers), we went for a little trail ride. I think it was one of the funnest trail rides we had.
One of the ponies is a new guy, and he's not quite ready to be a dude horse yet, however we don't wrangle with ponies so we're just going to have to work with him.
One of our wranglers tried an experiment on him, and it was quickly proved that he didn't like it.
She had no problems staying on him, but I think she'll be one of the wranglers working with this guy this summer, preparing him so he's ready to take people out.
Which will hopefully be soon. Despite this picture, he's actually doing really well. You have to do something very specific to get him to react like this. Something that guest riders shouldn't be doing.
As I mentioned earlier, we've started our rides. Today was our first day.
So far I'm having a lot of fun.Labels: Horseback Riding, Yellowstone
-Risawn:
# 3:32 PM -
|
|
