Big & Bold

Are we done yet?

Today we were going to ride with Becca & Kaos, and since Rhio had a good workout yesterday, Red was up.  I drove the 1 mile over to his barn because I'm using the same saddle on both horses currently, so have to take it back & forth between barns.  I wonder if I could figure out some way to carry my saddle on my bike, because I feel a little silly driving 1 mile down the road and, heck, I could use the extra exercise.  

I tacked up and decided to head through the woods back to the other barn to meet Becca, as there was a lot of traffic on the road.  Red was afraid of the dump truck parked with its bed raised in dump position, and leery of the something that was hung over the grain auger & flapping a bit in the breeze - all while I was leading him around the barn to the car just to get Kelso & my GPS.  Oh, so it's going to be one of those days!  

 

Heading down the access route to the back trails - Dave is currently prepping this area to plant peas this year, which I think means the cows won't be pastured in here until the end of the season.  This is great, because it also means the gates will be open & it'll be easier to ride through - the gates are electrified wire with handles and a bit difficult to manage with a horse, plus I prefer not to ride through the herd of cows.  You can see Kelso trotting on ahead.

Big Rig and his buddy (I'm not sure if it's a steer or a young bull) - look at how massive he is!  Red was definitely looking askance at these guys as we went past; they're not usually so close to the fence.

We met Becca & Kaos, and came back through the trails to cross over the road & ride around those trails & the gravel pits.  Red was all fired up, which was slightly unfortunate because Becca has been having some trouble with Kaos misbehaving, and was hoping Red would be a positive influence.  I'm not sure he was, but we did have a good ride.  I wished I'd had his running martingale on him today, as he was ready to run.  Kaos seems to lose it when the speed goes up, so I was trying to keep him to a reasonable trot - and wasn't all that successful!  

Becca & Kaos leading the way

Red was big & bold when he was leading, hardly spooking at all today.  He is so much better with a buddy along.  He did want to go too fast pretty much the entire time, so we put Kaos in front so she didn't feel like she had to rush to keep up.  We did the trail - gravel pit loop twice and headed home along the road.  

Red picked up a 4 foot long weed somewhere along the way.  That thing stuck with us a long time!  We could hear it dragging along the ground, but it didn't seem to bother him & was too low in his tail for Becca to reach it from her saddle, so we just left it.  

Overall today we did 9 miles in about 2 hours - not a very fast pace, but a very nice ride.  We saw only a single Canada goose in the gravel pit, much less wildlife than I usually encounter.  Red was very fresh & full of himself but rateable and not too spooky.  And he felt sound, without the "offness" that seemed to be there on our last long ride.  He's had 2 doses of Adequan so far and 1 acupuncture treatment, so he needs another acupuncture in the next day or so and another dose of Adequan next week.