GRV - 1st Day at the Ranch

October 14: Day 2
We woke up to rain, fog and 28 degrees! Wasn’t it supposed to be warmer here? We just poked around and chatted with Elisa…and fixed a killer breakfast from leftovers we had brought. Mid-morning the fog lifted and the rain subsided, so we wandered outside, closed off some gates and let the horses have a larger space to romp in. Wow, did they take advantage of that. Even though it was slightly muddy and slick, they had a great time bucking, racing and chasing each other through the three corrals. I don’t think Elisa could believe how wild they got as soon as they had some space. She decided it had been a really good idea to let them out for a while before saddling up. We never longe our horses before riding. In fact, only one of them even knows what a longe line is, but we do give them plenty of time to blow off steam if they’ve been cooped up awhile (like in a trailer for 11 hours the day before).

In the early afternoon, the sun came out and we headed out for a short ride. Elisa led us off across the desert to show us the Ranch’s one hour trail ride – with a lot of extras thrown in. We spent about 2 hours out going up and down gullies and trotting across a great high meadow. Elisa spent a lot of time on Washoe’s movement skills, moving him in different circles, doing a lot of transitions from walk, trot, canter, and especially stopping skills. A lot of time was spent on getting a willing backup and much better stopping. Now if we can just keep him tuned into this. I got a really nice, long running walk out of Jesse; she kept up with Washoe’s canter with no problem. We finished the ride with the regular “painted desert” route the guests get to take.

We spent the evening chatting with Mike, the housemate. He works for Ghost Ranch as an on-call maintenance guy while he’s finishing classes in adobe building. It was fun learning more about adobe construction and fantasizing about how to use it around the Ranch.