Daddy Daughter Date

As many long time followers can probably figure out, M&M has progressed from The Cutest Baby In The World to The Cutest Little Girl In The World and is racing head long towards The Cutest Little Young Lady In The World. She turned 11 not too long ago, and she's been horse crazy for several years now. The Queen and I, being doting parents that we are, get her horseback riding lessons to indulge this youthful passion. Last week, she had her first lesson in a while after taking a rather hard fall off a horse and then being sick and us traveling and such. She chose to have a trail ride instead of a formal lesson. I mentioned as how I wanted to go too, and plans were hatched. 

M&M confident upon her trusty steed, Turbo

My view for most of the ride

It's rather peaceful in an open field on horseback

The weather was absolutely amazing. Even thought it is mid January in north Texas, the temps were in the mid 70s, the sky was clear and the winds were light. All in all, a beautiful day to ride. The place we take M&M to for her lessons has about 80 acres worth of land to ride and a fairly nice trail to follow. 

It has literally been years since I was atop a horse for any length of time. Fortunately, M&M's instructor had pity on me and chose an even tempered horse named Ginger for me and even took care of saddling her up for me. Now, come to find out later in the ride, Ginger is known to be lazy. She also likes to eat. ALL. THE. TIME. 

She was not thrilled with the prospects of leaving her hay bale and feed bucket behind to trot my fat sorry *ss around. She did not want to keep up with the group either. So, I repeatedly had to encourage her to keep up which led to a "lope" every few minutes to catch up. Thus, my groin, thighs and lower back all got a workout they were not expecting. 

All in all, I am not too displeased with my performance. Ginger only tried to kill me twice. The first time, I was just giving her more squeeze to catch up to the group again when she literally dug in all four hooves, dropped her head and took a massive mouthful of dry grass in her mouth. I almost went Tango Uniform right off the flight deck. I did lose my grip on the reins which Ginger took as a sign to keep her head down and keep eating. 

The second time, Ginger decided she needed to relieve herself of some recycled feed. Unlike some horses who are quite content to keep egressing the area while conducting evacuation exercises, Ginger prefers to stop dead, lift her tail and take careful aim. Not a problem says I. I'll wait. Someone forgot to mention that Ginger is "extra spicy" when she is finished. I don't know if she burned her bung whole or if she was so overcome with joy at offloading something foul, but she shook her head and took off with nary a warning almost leaving me hanging in mid air a la Wile E. Coyote. 

Before long, we had circled back around to where the barn was in sight. Ginger liked that part of the ride and was only too happy to take the lead at that point. She didn't want to stop for gates or wait for the group to catch up. We had a little discussion about that. 

Everyone survived.  No blood was shed. My groin and thighs were not happy for days afterwards. M&M had a great time, and we have another Daddy Daughter outing in the planning stages.