Over the River and Through the Woods....

....except we didn't go to Grandmother's house, and it wasn't exactly a river -- more like a small stream. We went out for a ride on Sunday through the woods near our house. We decided to stay in the woods this time, which meant a lot of backtracking to take the different varying, and sometimes dead-ending, trails. This also meant we had to cross the little stream about four or five times. What a different experience this has been compared to a year or so ago. There was a time when coming upon that six inch wide stream of water caused The Girls to stop dead in their tracks and freak out. It used to take so much coaxing, prodding, and sometimes pulling to get them to cross that little bit of water. There were times when I was sure it took us about 10-15 minutes to get across, and physically exhausted John and me in the process. But then last summer when riding a different area a few miles away from home, we came across a very large flooded spot. With some coaxing, but as much as I would have thought, we got them to wade right through the water. After that, we kept going back to that spot until they just trotted on through it like it was nothing. So yesterday crossing that little stream in the woods was no problem. Something else also happened that was pretty neat -- we came across some places on the trail where obviously someone had been doing some tree removal. There were lots of branches, large and small, scattered about, and even through the snow cover we could tell the ground was sort of torn up. With Divna in the lead, I spotted the path around the mess that I felt was the safest. I only had to give her the slightest cues and she took the path around that I had picked out -- a path that lead off the trail briefly, then curved back to the trail. Zora followed. It is so neat when something like that happens. I like to think at those times that Divna trusts me -- I hope she knows I would never ask her to do anything that would hurt her. She is such a good trail horse! I am so happy (and fortunate) to have her in my life....