Come on, it will be fun!

Famous last words.

After my potentially scary (but in reality not scary at all) dental appointment I headed out to the barn to see my boy. I was finally able to make it out there on a nice day and decided that I just couldn't face riding in the arena. I asked Susan if she wanted to ride down the road with me. There are no trails but both of our horses are great by the road. Kaswyn is so level headed and Albert is a trained and deputized police horse who has seen just about everything, so I thought it would be nice and relaxing.

Susan was hesitating, but I convinced her. "Come on, it will be fun!" I said. She said okay, and we both began cleaning our horses up. They had been outside and both were fairly covered in mud. Since the mud was kind of stinky, both horses smelled bad. I decided that when we got back Kaswyn was getting a bubble bath. I just can't stand smelly dirty horses, and this had been a long winter without a bath.

I went into the tack room to grab my helmet and asked Susan where her helmet was. She said at first that she didn't have one at the barn. I knew that was baloney, so I went in her trunk and pulled one out. She really doesn't like to wear a helmet, but I pester her about it until she wears one. I know when she goes on patrol with Albert that she has to wear one, so I don't see why she balks at wearing one at other times.

So I guilted her into putting on her helmet and we got on our horses. I got on first (using the bench outside the barn as a mounting block) followed by Susan. As soon as she rode up to me I saw that her reins were crossed under Albert's neck. I told her that she had to fix it and she said, half jokingly "Are you sure it won't just work this way?" Of course not! So I rode over to Albert's head and fixed the reins without getting off of Kaswyn. I know I should have dismounted and fixed it, and that's the kind of stupid stuff that usually gets people hurt, but it only took ten seconds and then we were off.

We walked down our street and then turned down a side road with less traffic. We came up on a large boarding barn where we both know the barn manager. As we rode up to the far pastures we saw the guy out by the road cleaning out the ditch. We stopped and chatted with him for a few minutes. At one point I commented that we had to ride on the road since we didn't have trails at our place, and he told us that across the street from where we were standing was a nature conservatory and we could ride back there. I asked if there was a trail and he said there used to be, but it's probably not very defined anymore. He said it's about a hundred acres and he rides back there all the time.

We thought that sounded like fun so we took our horses off the road and into the woods. It was pretty muddy in spots but we were able to navigate around the mud and over a few large logs on the ground. We had been in the woods about five minutes when Susan points at a tree and says "Hey, that tree looks like it was scratched by a bear."

I eyed the gigantic scars in the tree bark and said "But that's so high up the tree!"

She said "Well, the bears are big!"

I said "You really think there are bears in here?"

"Sure. There are bears around my house and I live just down the road."

"Really? Huh."

I didn't think much of it because I didn't think we'd actually see a bear.

Suddenly both of our unflappable horses spooked, then turned tail and ran back towards the road in a panic.

To be continued...