For our dream ceremonial graduation trail ride, Dodger and I followed four other horses and their riders into the Teanaway back country just east of Cle Elum, WA this past weekend. Dodger found out just what it takes to get the two of us up steep hills, through the brush, and back down. Safely.
First, we went up, up, up then over on flat but seriously dusty trails. After a whole lot of going under trees, through brush, and across the odd dirt or gravel road-to-nowhere to escape the dust, we went up some more. Those who knew the area kept waving their arms and saying “the ridge is just over there.” After the third or fourth time of that, I knew we were at their mercy. My inner compass went haywire so many years ago I don’t even pull it out anymore.
Dodger happily took up his spot at the back of the group and enjoyed the view. After awhile, the others started looking back, wondering how “Stoner” and I were doing. He had his signature amblin’ strut going and nobody in front, increasing the distance between us, was going to influence his speed unless I asked him to pick it up. Once he figured out that when others rode out of view, they were still close enough, he had no anxieties. As five women each made her own way through the woods and brush with an occasional Gotta love dem horsies! and YeeeHAW! to check the echo quality of the surroundings, Dodger got his groove on.
At one point I pulled an apple out of my saddle bag and noticed on about the third crunchy bite that Dodger’s pace had slowed and he had begun to weave a bit. Were the hills finally getting to him? I looked down and saw that his ears were pointing at me and his right eye was locked onto my apple. I laughed and handed every other bite to him. That’s all it took for him to straighten up and soldier on.
I’m guessing it took about an hour for us to reach the ridge. We stopped and surveyed our 360 degree, gorgeous-blue-sky-perfect-temp view of the Stuart mountain range and all the surrounding hills. After a few photo moments while the braver among us stood confidently on their saddles, 
we took the time to appreciate our good fortune to be where we were, we shared some laughs, then started back down.
We took a different route back that required traversing steeper parts as we continued stepping over and around gullies, limbs and rocks. Dodger did a steady, stellar job of responding to all of my leg cues. I was enormously proud of him. He never once balked, freaked or tried to take matters into his own hooves. He seemed to share my this-is-so-fun outlook and did whatever I asked of him.
Our only challenge came on the final, steep trail he had huffed and puffed to get us up initially. He doesn’t tend to operate in AWD, using his front end for everything if he could; I wasn’t aware or doing all I should’ve been to encourage and ask for some critical hind end engagement. So as we went into a particularly steep, squeezy place on the trail with too much weight on his front end, Gravity (bless her heart) took the opportunity to try to suck us back to sea level at mach speed. After four seconds of a bad Man-from-Snowy-River imitation through an endless supply of nasty 5-inch rolling rocks, one or both of us accidentally did something right, and Dodger came to a stop. He was as happy as I was that Gravity lost that round and we took a collective breath of gratitude. Shannon quickly rode over to us on her sorrel steed for a timely reminder lesson on the importance of hind end engagement. No shit Red Rider.
I got my stirrups, feet, legs, back and cheeks all in the right alignment and appropriate state of clenching, and we attempted it again. This time, Dodger’s hind end hunkered down, his hooves sprouted claws, and he dug two grooves in the hill the rest of the way down. I was so proud of him for understanding that we didn’t have multiple tries to get his AWD working that I just wanted to hug him. He was as focused as I’ve ever seen him on doing something right the first time.
When we got to the bottom, I was awash in love and gratitude. I thanked Shannon for getting us to this three-year-long-awaited day. She not only uncovered, but nurtured—in my once-neglected and earnestly delinquent horse—Dodger’s confident, capable, fun-loving, adventurous spirit. After the longest, dustiest, sweatiest kiss on his cheek, with my eyes closed, inhaling his sweet horsey smell, I whispered, “We finally did it, Dodger.”