Mudding in Orick

Saturday started off with high heads and lots of snorting. There was a bull groaning or growling or generally making noise that was WAY SCARY! It was over behind a tall fence and no one could see it, but it was pretty loud. Ziggy tried to crawl out from under the trailer dividers. Both Star and Jupiter blasted out to get away from him and then Lynn carefully stayed out of his way once she opened up Zig's section. We walked them over to the end of the fence so they could see what it was, but they weren't having any of it!

Jupiter and Star settled down once they got to eating green grass, but not Ziggy. Eventually we saddled them up and got on--although, neither Star nor Ziggy would get close enough to the really great mounting blocks. We took off up the levy toward the trail head with lots of high heads and tight reins. We had also been told that there had been a bear around the first two turns. It never materialized, but we did hear some crashing in the brush.

The trail was slick and many spots were made of deep mud. Star slipped around because he doesn't want to get his prissy feet muddy; Jupes plowed through with no problem, but Ziggy got himself into trouble a couple of times. Once, he straddled the trail as he attempted to go up on the bank and slipped. Another time, Mr. Calm and Unruffled got scared of a large, red tree stump. That time his back legs slipped off the trail and his front legs were sinking up to his ankles. It was not good. He was sideways in the trail and there wasn't enough room for those kinds of shenanigans! Lynn had to get off and walk him by the scary tree.

I would say everyone was on high alert. Jupes was continually vying for passing Star and getting to the front. I think he was concerned about whatever it was out there coming up behind him--he didn't want to be last! We rode sideways most of the day. When everyone else seemed like they had relaxed reins--we did not. However, I was very proud of him--he did well.

However, for all that it was a great day! The temperature was perfect and no one performed any tricks. It was a good place to be!

**Off topic but I have to share: in Lake Tahoe there are many bears. They are thinking of adding a new activity here at the Spanish Language Institute: Running with bears, like in Spain, running with bulls. Then someone said, "Maybe it's running FROM bears!" (: Anyway, I guess the high school has three bears that like to lay on their warm sidewalks and one of the participants in the institute almost ran over a bear on her bicycle Sunday. I thought of Lynn and her love of bear sightings.