A Quick Ride

Sunday I finally got up the motivation to go ride Max. I only had a half hour to tack up and ride, so he got a quick curry and I threw on the bareback pad.  Parts of the property were still ice, despite the recent warm-up, so we had a lot of areas to avoid.  We mostly tooled around the pasture then went to walk through my "obstacle" of cut branches.  The front yard was mostly snow free and I wanted to do some trotting, but it also had a direct and very cold wind. We immediately turned back to the pasture. It has a nice windbreak. 

 The pasture was slick.

Max decided to "test" me while we were going through the branches obstacle. I was telling him to head slightly in the direction of the woods to go around some of the bigger stuff. He decided to turn to the left at the last minute towards the pasture and ended up getting tangled up in the branches enough that I hopped off to help him through.  He didn't freak out which I was very proud of. I also managed to get back on him using only a 4 inch branch to step up.   It wasn't pretty, but my goal is to be able to mount bareback from the ground.  This is just a precautionary measure in case I fall off on the trail and can't find a spot to get back on.