Hangin' With Nevel

Rain, Rain and more RAIN!
REALLY?  and the only days I had free were filled with Rain or Family obligations!  : (

Finally we succeeded in capturing a week end day that contained some sun.
Nevel is notorious for having ill saddle fit.  He is SO round...even when he is thin.
Thus I decided to try out Persee's saddle on him.

The stirrups did not come with the saddle...they are light weight new design of endurance stirrup.

It turns out they clanked with every trotting step...ugh.
They are bulky despite their light weight and I don't like the looks of them.

Then I searched for a girth.  It so happens then when I trailered Persee to the trainer that all of my tack JUMPED off their hooks and hid themselves in a jumbled mess on the floor of the trailer.
I have never had that occur when trailering before...but then again it was a different trailer with different hooks and such.

It took too long to figure out a girth to fit ...first too long, then too short.  So I went with the long one.

I also know now that my stirrups are on the wrong way and the "Toe" should be facing the saddle, not away from it!  arghh.

Regardless,  I managed to get all of the tack straightened out and mounted up.  Nevel was "fresh" and took off at a nice trot up the lane to the big wood.
He happily splashed through the creek without attempting to jump it.  From there on out a huge muddy mess of a trail rose before us.  It a was muck sucking shoe slurping mess! Finally we rounded the curve and found some decent trail stretching out ahead of us for a short trot.
The Grass was emerald green and a few flowers blooming.  We attempted numerous trails only to find more MUCK, slick areas, newly created ravines with running water seeping up out of the ground and gazillions of little creeks and downed trees....no fun riding here!
We tried the meadow too...even more mess.  Finally we looped around and headed home...back to the shoe sucking muck.
We were just a short distance from the the creek when Nevel slipped in the muck and made a loud sucking noise has he drug his feet up out of it.  At the same time, to his right rear an animal crashed through the brush and he BOLTED! I hung on for dear life for what seemed an eternity.
But maybe it was only a couple hundred feet or less!  ha ha....I was just glad to be alive at that point as Nevel then tried to jump the creek and bolt for home!  BAD NEVEL!
Back home he dissed the saddle even though it fit him pretty well!

Nevs would just rather eat!