A few weeks ago I was again in Calgary. I try to never let an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors there pass me by so I had booked a ride at Moose Mountain.
Moose Mountain is just outside Bragg Creek and borders the Kananaskis range which can be seen a little way off.
When I arrived I was not sure what I was going to ride or how many would be going out that day. As it happened I was the only rider for the morning and I got given a lovely horse called Heart to ride. He was a wide black Percheron cross. And I mean wide !! But he was a lovely, well mannered boy and even after being ridden by a lot of riders of varying standards all summer he was still pretty light and fun to ride.
The ride we went on was around 16km long and 3 1/2 hours. We started on a gravel road past some pretty impressive houses and then passed through a barbed wire fence into national forest land. Here the going got a bit more fun. This is the foothills of the Rocky Mountains after all. We passed through forest and meadow accompanied by a dog from the stables. In the forest there were a lot of cattle that the local ranches allow to roam the land. I can see that here you would need horses to round up the cattle. I can't think of any vehicle that could do the job. Heart was a little nervous about the cattle at times, but soon got over it.
The route took us up onto a ridge line that gave great views of a small lake and the mountains in the middle distance.
The guide I was riding with was a young lady from Sweden. I'm sorry to say I forgot her name. But we had a lovely chat for those 3 1/2 hours. She had taken a degree in animal behaviour and was hoping to take a masters in Equine Behaviour. As a result we could chat about the benefits of positive reinforcement training vs to negative reinforcement and agreed that actually they were both equally valid and valuable depending on the circumstance. I think we both leaned towards PR for ground work and NR for ridden work, but only as a bias not as a rigid model.
We also chatted at length about the style I'm studying, vaquero, and she seemed pretty intrigued. She had ridden her horse in a bosal but had not really picked up on the finer points. This is something I'm beginning to realise about bosal riding. Many folks, especially in the USA, do it but very few have studied how to do it right. I find this a little worrying as the bosal does need a certain feel and technique to be effective and fair to the horse. But then again so does the bit I guess.
All in all it was a fun ride though having got off I found I had to do a fair bit of stretching to ease my legs back into their original shape !!
Moose Mountain is just outside Bragg Creek and borders the Kananaskis range which can be seen a little way off.
When I arrived I was not sure what I was going to ride or how many would be going out that day. As it happened I was the only rider for the morning and I got given a lovely horse called Heart to ride. He was a wide black Percheron cross. And I mean wide !! But he was a lovely, well mannered boy and even after being ridden by a lot of riders of varying standards all summer he was still pretty light and fun to ride.
The ride we went on was around 16km long and 3 1/2 hours. We started on a gravel road past some pretty impressive houses and then passed through a barbed wire fence into national forest land. Here the going got a bit more fun. This is the foothills of the Rocky Mountains after all. We passed through forest and meadow accompanied by a dog from the stables. In the forest there were a lot of cattle that the local ranches allow to roam the land. I can see that here you would need horses to round up the cattle. I can't think of any vehicle that could do the job. Heart was a little nervous about the cattle at times, but soon got over it.
The route took us up onto a ridge line that gave great views of a small lake and the mountains in the middle distance.
The guide I was riding with was a young lady from Sweden. I'm sorry to say I forgot her name. But we had a lovely chat for those 3 1/2 hours. She had taken a degree in animal behaviour and was hoping to take a masters in Equine Behaviour. As a result we could chat about the benefits of positive reinforcement training vs to negative reinforcement and agreed that actually they were both equally valid and valuable depending on the circumstance. I think we both leaned towards PR for ground work and NR for ridden work, but only as a bias not as a rigid model.
We also chatted at length about the style I'm studying, vaquero, and she seemed pretty intrigued. She had ridden her horse in a bosal but had not really picked up on the finer points. This is something I'm beginning to realise about bosal riding. Many folks, especially in the USA, do it but very few have studied how to do it right. I find this a little worrying as the bosal does need a certain feel and technique to be effective and fair to the horse. But then again so does the bit I guess.
All in all it was a fun ride though having got off I found I had to do a fair bit of stretching to ease my legs back into their original shape !!
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