At-home trail riding

Why is it that I'm more nervous about riding at home than I am in other places? My husband and I took our greenest horses out yesterday for about a 1.5 hour trail ride around the place. Tex jumped and crowhopped a couple times when the two dogs ran up behind him- once on the trail and once in the pasture.
We rode on trails, up and down a few hills, and in wide open hay fields. In one of the hay fields, I asked Tex to lope off in a circle, and he threw a little fit. After a few more circles and asking him to move in and out of the circle at a lope, he was sweating like crazy and had no more energy to be stupid.
The rest of the ride was peaceful.
TM

What to improve on

This is my score card from the trail ride. It looks like we need to improve on backing and being smoother on lateral movement.
I can't wait for the next one!

Judged trail riding

When my friends and I decided to go to the Equitrek trail challenge, it was really just to go spread the word about the cowboy church and have fun riding together. I never expected to really do well on my first time doing it. Tex has only ridden outside an arena probably less than 20 times in the four years I've been working with him. I was prepared for the worst- jumping, spooking, even a little crowhopping.

When we arrived and saddled up, I took him into the arena there and did some circles and worked on him just giving me his mind and willingness. We also worked on rate transitions a little. Tex is pretty good at responding to just my seat. When we are at a trot and I settle into my seat, he slows it down to a walk easily. At a lope it is similar.
As a matter of fact, he never has much resistance at slowing down. It's the going faster that he resists most.

When we rode out, I began to see that I had one of the calmer and more laid back horses on the ride. Our first obstacle was sidepassing to take a raincoat of of a hay bale and moving it to another hay bale. I knew he wouldn't care a bit about the raincoat- I throw stuff onto him all the time. Also, we sidepass to the right all the time when we are in line at roping practice. We did that one with no problem.

Next was backing through the L twice. Tex didn't want to back for that long, but he did it anyway. It wasn't as fluid or as willing as I would've liked, but he definitely was listening and obeying.

Then our group missed a ribbon and ended up making the whole trail before seeing any more obstacles. So, we had to backtrack back to the obstacles we had missed. This worked to my advantage. Tex's weakness was going downhill and uphill. We've done very little of that, and he was a little nervous about them. During our trek while we were lost, we went up and down at least 6 or 8 ravines and had plenty of practice.

The jump was next. On the pro level, I had to canter, jump a log, and continue cantering. This was definitely new for me and Tex, but I really wasn't worried. I knew he would do it, although I wasn't sure how pretty it would look or if he would hesitate.
He didn't, we made it, and it wasn't half bad. I may have a little jumping pony on my hands. :)

The last two obstacles were a ravine and a steep uphill. All of our practice helped tremendously. Tex listened carefully to my seat and words, tried hard, and took it really easy. He took good care of me. I was so proud.

When it was all done, I realized our strength is his willingness to do anything I ask him to do. He trusts me to not get him into any bad situations, and I expect him to do what I ask- period. Now if my kids would only be that good...