Haunted Hunter Pace - Recap of Leo's First "show"

As I may have mentioned last week, Leo's first official outing since coming to the barn in June took place last Sunday. The barn hosting was new to me, but they hold their Haunted Hunter Pace (HHP, from now on) around Halloween every year. I was actually meant to take Sherlock to last year's, but had to be out of town due to a family emergency. The barn has an absurd amount of trails, all wonderfully spooky for Halloween, and none of which I got pictures of. Leah totally did though - and we were finally, finally able to meet up! And I got to meet Ruby! And she lent me a bonnet because I didn't have one!

Prettiest bonnet. Thanks again, Leah!

DIY Mockingjay saddlepad. Teal pony in the background.

As my posts may have hinted at, my team went with a Hunger Games theme. Originally it was just me and Barn BFF S, with our two fancy chestnuts, and the plan was to be Tributes from District 12. At the last minute, Barn BFF eB decided to join the fun, and since her little white pony didn't quite fit with the whole "girls on fire" theme, we figured out a plan to make it work - obnoxious amounts of teal, and eB as Effie Trinket.

Leo on fire

Wally the OTTB on fire

So. Adorable.

Ahem. Leo loaded onto the trailer like a professional, which was very unexpected. Unloading, however, did not quite go as smoothly. As soon as the trailer stopped he started freaking out, pawing like crazy and coming up off the floor, and the poor thing was shaking like a leaf when we carefully coaxed him to back out. He then spent the next 30 minutes prancing around all wild-eyed, entertaining the onlookers with his excellent impression of a saddlebred stallion.

So. Much. Giraffe.

Like, Wally is pushing 17 hh, and Leo is a modest 15.2ish, and guess who looked taller for the first hour. -_- . Thankfully, after much walking, he began to calm down, largely related to the fact that Wally was soon discovered to be The Missing Piece From His Heart, and the two began a disgustingly adorable love affair involving much nuzzling and nibbling of manes. HORSES.

only calm because Walter is near.

We ended up running a little behind schedule, and had only a handful of minutes to warm up before our scheduled start time. And then we walked out of the warm up ring and began the hourish long journey.

Already sweating.

We walked and walked and pranced and walked. There was much talking to my semi-crazed red monster, who wanted to prance forever. It quickly became apparent that Leo's biggest concerns on the trails were the locations of the other horses around him. 98.34% of the time, he felt like he NEEDED to be in front. Being in front was the only thing that calmed him. Especially when going up or down a hill, of which there were many. At one point, we were heading down a very steep decline, and Wally was ahead of us, and Leo's brain just shut down completely - snorting and prancing and going sideways until S managed to find a spot to let us pass - then it was all (relative) calm, cool collection the rest of the way down. My horse has also apparently been trained to launch himself up steep inclines as swiftly as possible, despite me yelling at him that he is going to lose his footing and kill us both.

little skull charm, from Beka's Etsy shop

We had ten minutes in the open cross country field, and this was the hardest part of the entire ride for Leo's brain. On the trails, the jumps were the best thing that had ever happened in his life - he was locking on to everything and launching over them with gusto. In the field, with his new life partner and the pony off doing their things, he somewhat lost his shit completely. He would only go over the smallest of baby jumps, and only after refusing them the first time around - largely do to the fact that he was so busy looking around for his friends that he would realize 2 strides out that Oh hey, there's a jump there, WTF jump, slow down, and STARE. And then he would go over pretty much without issue. If he was following his friends over a jump, he'd try anything I pointed him at. Although since Lulu is a tiny pony and Wally is freshly rehabbed, there weren't exactly very many ~crazy~ jumps to be jumped.

Tragically there is no media of this - although in years past there have been photographers, this year there were none. But despite the high level of distraction, it was still quite fun.

The xc field marked the halfway point, and from there we continued out on the trails, up hills and down, miraculously managing to not get lost in the woods. The ride culminated in a massive open hillside field, which we had to make two laps of. S and I had been holding back our frothing speed demons pretty much for the entire ride at this point, and we were eager to let them run. I have never actually just allowed Leo to gallop full-speed as the barn lacks open fields, so I was particularly excited to see what would happen.

Aaand damn. That horse is FAST. Faster than Wally, apparently. Fast enough to catch up to the pair of riders ahead enough. Fast enough that I ended up holding him back the entire time so that he didn't accidentally fall on his face. And it was so much fun. Not once did I feel that e was running away with me or out of control - it was running simply for the sheer joy of it. It felt like a question he has been trying to ask me every single ride - can I run here? and I was finally answering 'yes.' He wasn't even winded after two laps (which were not entirely galloped, we took walk breaks). I wanted to do two to twelve more, and he seemed like he did, too.