Diva is four years old.  She is a gold champagne Missouri Fox Trotter.  She has been started and developed by Tony Vaught of Vaught Family Natural Horsemanship.  She was showed in the 2008 Missouri Fox Trotter Ranch Horse Furturity at the Celebration.  She came home in November 2008.

I gave her the winter off.

We went on our first trail ride today with our riding buddy, Hope.  We rode at James A Reed Park on a very nice warm spring day. A warm day without flies is precious in Missouri.

There were boggy places and water crossings, but we sailed thru all those.

Naturally Diva was excited about our first trail ride.  I took Diva out on the trail for our ground work.  I wanted her to see the place and work off some of her grand excitement.

Hope got there with her horse, Jazz.  Jazz has been ridden once last winter, so Hope was really excited about her first trail ride of the year on Jazz!  We took Jazz out and showed him the trail and worked off some of his excitement.  We did our group circle trick. Hope and I stood back to back and circled our horses around us. We decided to hang on to our own horse and not pass the rope.  We did great and there were no riders or walkers to come and watch us.  What a bummer that they missed this.

We delayed the actual ride a little longer, but at least it was time to mount up and hit the trail.  Diva let me mount her from the trailer fender.  I thought that was a good sign.

Off we went.  Diva and I stayed behind Jazz and Hope. Diva didn't want to stay behind. She wanted to go fast.  We zigzagged across our trail.  We jagged into the field and did a few circles now and then to slow our progress and stay behind the lead horse.

It didn't take but a half mile and Diva's head went down and she walked like a great trail horse.

From time to time we got excited again and did our circles in the field.  We met two riders and a man with his dog.  We were able to get far away from them.

Hope remarked that Diva seemed much easier than Nova.  Heck yes, Diva wants to do what I want, even though she gets excited. She doesn't think about arguing. 

Diva didn't spook once.  She took her time about being the lead horse thru some boggy water crossing on the way back.

Near the end of the ride, we took off in the field.  It was just slighly soggy.  We fox trotter so smoothly, I almost cried. It was fast and it was smooth. Her reach was incredible.  When I rejoined Hope, she gave us a compliment.

Susan, you and Diva looked stunning out there in the field with your red shirt and her golden color underneath the blue sky.  She looked fantastic while she was moving!

It don't get any better than that for the first trail ride!