Okay, not really. But she certainly made it seem like the tiny little ditch that we encountered on the trail was known to suck horses down into them, never to be seen again.

Zelda’s a pretty rational horse who isn’t flustered by much, so I was surprised when she spotted this tiny drainage ditch ahead and stopped dead. Nope. No way was she going anywhere near that! She thought it was a great time to turn around and backtrack. No, she was sure that this was not the right way to go.

I provided considerably amusement to the dog walkers who came by me.

“Your horse is afraid of that?” Asked one of them, chuckling to herself.

At this point, I wasn’t chuckling. I was determined. My spurs were engaged. There was no way that we were not going over the “ditch”. We stood and stared at it for awhile, Zelda stretching her nose out and calculating the trajectory required to pass over it safely. Finally, she jumped it. From a standstill. Like it was four feet wide.

I sang her praises and then turned her around. It was equally scary coming from the other direction.

After she’d crossed it four more times she was willing to believe that jumping it was not really necessary.

We went on. And then we encountered the stream bed. Obviously, she could be swept away by the current, so this too required some thinking, some testing of the boundaries, and a hearty launch.

Thank God we don’t encounter any truly difficult obstacles!