Trail Riding Off-the-Track Thoroughbred

Off-the-track Thoroughbred, Light Artillery aka "Maverick" enjoys trail riding with his mom Amanda. Click on this image to see more photos.

We just got back in from the camping trip. We had a wonderful time! Maverick was absolutely the best! He got ridden six times! He munched on lots of new clover and loved all the attention, as always, since he was the BIG horse and would stick his head way out and stretch his neck way out from the stall. He’d nicker when he heard us stirring around the camp site.

Marrianna State Park had a great set up. There were six large fully covered and enclosed stalls and an additional 10 smaller high fenced “outdoors” stalls. The price was unbeatable and the terrain was true trail. We reserved the whole horses area between the whole family and there was very little traffic. The trails varied from cut out trails through the woods on high field grounds, long smooth dirt roads, and BOGGY swamp bottoms where the horses really had to work. I’d recommend it to anyone who could make it there.

I rode Maverick every ride except the last one this afternoon just because he’s mine and I wanted to…lol. Well and to be honest he was a tad edgy Friday. We pranced and did just beautiful sidepasses, cantered in place, cantered sideways, did up and down pop corn prancing. (shhhhh but I loved it the whole time). All of the other horses there were easy going QH, well my mare Reba is fiery too. But Maverick though he had the longest legs must have covered 3x the distance with his short but high prancing. We hadn’t been on long fast rides like that since November and at times I thought maybe just maybe my intestines were being thrown up over my rib cage. No, not really. But the best part was all of his energy was totally contained and under me. Yes we were on tree tops and times and lots of motion, but there were no fits, bucks, uncontrolled running or anything.

I let my youngest brother Zeke ride him today on the ride and he was even able to w/t/c him with the group, ahead or behind. Zeke likes his power and red headed attitude too. Maverick stalled well and trailered well. When we got home he and Reba took off running, well basically frolicking in their pasture, just to do a U turn and bolt to his the dirt spot under the blooming dog woods for a roll! They’d been all clean for too long.

I’ve got some pictures from the weekend. I ended up leaving my camera case at the house so I didn’t take the camera on the trail unfortunately so the pictures are mainly barn and group shots. Maverick didn’t look like he was from Ohio in the race barns trudging through the Florida swamp bottoms. ell, I get the picts from the camera soon and send them. Hope all is well and take care. Little Amanda will be happy to see her pictures with her new Friend Maverick. I’ll let her know she’s famous on the internet! She’ll be excited.

Thank you
Amanda and Maverick