The Rides are Becoming Ordinary

The Rides are Becoming Ordinary

And that’s a good thing. It just doesn’t give me much to write about. I only got to ride with Ellen on Saturday, and we had a really nice time. We went up to the show ring trails. This time, we even rode up to the show ring. It is a large open field with the trail going around the show grounds. The area can be active, so it was no surprise that we ran into 5 horses. Dante handled the horses passing him without any trouble—unlike last weekend. It may have been because he didn’t feel trapped this time. We didn’t ride the whole trail because it was very hot in the sun. We usually only do it in the cooler weather. We prefer take the back trail which is scenic and very quiet.

Ellen tries to do a “first” on every ride. Her “first” on this one was to ride down the very steep hill. It has been years and years since she has done that, and she made it about a third of the way down before her nerves told her she should hop off and lead the rest of the way. Dante was perfect.

She had to work on Sunday, so I planned a good, long ride with Kevin and Starry. This was my longest ride of the year. They were so slow for the first half of the ride, but once I threw some cantering in, Cole woke up. Soon, we lost Starry as we flew down the trail at a trot—he actually got too hyper to canter safely. It was so much fun. While we were enthusiastically trotting down the trail, I had a wonderful thought—Cruiser must have come along for the ride! Cole was acting just like him. When we got to the homestretch, I figured Cole would fly down it—after all, that’s what Cruiser always did. I asked him to canter—and away we went. He stopped quietly at the end and then we waited for Starry to catch up.

We did a mix of trotting and walking on the way home. It started to rain, but it never got so bad that we were uncomfortable. The ride took us 2:50. I used to do this ride in less than 2 hours when Cruiser was young. He was indefatigable. Part of the reason it took so long is that the trail is in such back shape in many places that we only trot—and I used to canter it with Cruiser. I sure hope they intend to do some repairs on our trails. We still had fun, despite the trail condition.