What’s Been Happening, Driving

Driving Thursday Resurfaces

No driving, but driving progress.

When last we spoke about driving, we had a busted cart and a horse who hadn’t driven in a while [We Say Goodbye to Driving Posts, For Now in October, with brief reappearances for show posts Lights-Camera-Classes in October & Once More Into The Cart in November]. Now we have a semi-assembled cart and a horse who doesn’t remember a thing about being a driving horse.

We gave up on finding a cart. My driver kept finding the perfect cart … in the UK. In the US, it was all pony carts. So we ordered new shafts and the various crosspieces that one replaces when one is replacing the shafts. Coach Kate brought them down as far as Tennessee. I drove up to fetch them. It was cheaper. Ninety-six inches of wood costs more ship to than it does to buy.

Driver spent the holidays putting together the 3-D puzzle that is our new cart. Fortunately for me, he counts working on the cart as driving, so I got to spend the holiday period riding Milton.

We brought the cart into the field to test-fit the space between the new shafts.
Us: Milton, this is your new cart.
Milton: What’s that? Why is it near me? Get it away from me. Agggg, it touched me.

No worries. We will recapitulate the steps we took when we introduced driving the first time. Then we will have Coach Courtney help hitch. It’ll come back to him.

You may be wondering how we will balance Milton’s activities. Should we work in the backyard? Ride or ground-drive? Should we go to SSF? Ride? Long-line lesson? Drive? A combination of the above? Should we go to FHF for a jump lesson?

I have no idea.

No worries here either. We will let Milton tell us. I think it is fairly clear by now that we can be accused of many things, but not of pushing our horses.

Kitty Photobomb

Thank you for reading,
Katherine Walcott