A 20 Mile Weekend

We laugh at temperatures in the high nineties. Well not really. It was hot. We still managed a long ride on Saturday morning. We went past the city farm almost all the to Edison Hwy. We rode past the recyle yard and across railrod tracks. We rode past a riding stable. We rode for about 4 hours and logged almost 13 miles. We did some loping whenever possible. Are average speed was 3.4 mph. Here are some pics:

The City Farm

Yes, that's sweat folks!

Dusty is thinking he has to jump that!

We are such scofflaws

Riding past the recycle plant

Doing some rollbacks

Does it look like we're going fast?

This owl was too hot to fly away

Sunday's ride was a little tamer. We went out to the development and parcticed some loping where I got a Western Pleasure 6.4 mph lope out of Jessie. Can't say that I see what the advantage of that is. We also worked on some sidepassing and backing up. We played a little game of simon says where one of us calls out a gait and we did transitions up and down between walk trot and canter. The horses were quite done with us by the time we got home and spent the afternoon snoozing. Their feet are chipped up. Going to have to take a file to them. Twenty miles wears them done quite well.

I've taken to cleaning their pens twice a day when possible to reduce the fly population. That and the fly predators seems to have improved the condition in just one week.

We've been doing groundwork in the evenings. I'm hoping to get some in tonight.

River Ride

We trailered out to the river for a ride on Sunday. I'm not sure how we do it, but we wake up at 8am, have breakfast, trailer 30 minutes, ride for 3 hours, and don't get home until 4 in the afternoon. Sunday time math just doesn't add up...that's a good thing.

These pictures are in no particular order. Thankfully we didn't have to ride up any of those hills. The horses had their feet trimmed early in the week and they both seemed a little tender.

My pretty girl with her head nice and low.

Some of the nice homes along the river.

The river is flowing high and fast because of all the rain.

Taking some shots with the timer. It's hard to get back on your horse and pose in 10 seconds.

It was a good ride. Jessie still has her head on a swivel sometimes, especially through the park with all the kids and cars and stuff. I could have done some groundwork before we left, but I'm not sure it would have helped. We did serpentines through a quiet part of the park. We circled lots of trees and she did well. As soon as we were back in the open, she was looking around again. More importantly it was a beautiful ride and a fun day.

The weather is still weird

The weather was nice both Saturday and Monday and we did get to ride. Sunday a storm blew in and it was windy with showers - weird weather for these parts.

Saturday we rode out east and had a couple of good sessions. We were working on trying to keep our lower backs soft and supple while sitting the walk, trot, and canter. The end result is both of our backs were kinda sore on Tuesday.

The riding areas have been cut down so the weeds are not as tall. With the rain the ground was relatively soft. Jessie did very good on her long lope. Each time she gets just a bit easier to control. She is softening nicely, too, as well as changing leads.

I took a few pictures. This is the artistic shot throught the stirrup:

Then at the end or our block the neighbor is keeping goats. They all came running up to us as we walked by so, of course, I had to try and pet them.

All-in-all we got in about 4 hours of riding over about 14 miles. The farrier comes next week.