Slow and Steady

Slow and Steady

Ellen and I have a horse problem.  In the world of horse problems, this isn't a serious one, but it is somewhat frustrating for us.  Our rides are taking too long.

We don't mind long rides.  We like riding a long distance.  Our problem is that short distances are taking too long.

In our park, we basically have 3 different rides we can go on.  When we cross the river, we can go north or south.  Usually we go south.  It offers the best ride with the best quality trails.  We can do a lot of trotting and cantering, if we so desire  If we only walk, it is very scenic.  Round trip, it is only about 5 miles--which isn't quite long enough.

If we cross the river and ride to the north, the first part isn't as scenic, and we share too much of it with the rest of humanity.  Much of the trail goes along the road, and we have to cross the street three times.  Ellen (not Dante) gets nervous in traffic.  Cole acts up when he hears loud motorcycles.  This part of the trail just isn't very pleasant.

To get to the unpleasant part of the trail, we have to ride up a short hill, down a long one and cross the river.  For some reason, this takes the longest time--particularly for Dante.  We only walk it, and he just walks so slow.  It isn't just him.  Cole also walks very slowly there--just not as slow as Dante.  It think that there are too many stones on the hill for them.

Once we ride up the "big hill," the trails are terrific.  They are secluded, pretty and they are great for trotting.  It just takes us so long the get there--but it isn't very far at all. 

We trot where we can, but since Dante is such a slow trotter, most of the time I am walking while they are catching up.  The rivers were taking a long time to cross, due to Dante's pokiness, but Ellen has worked with him on it.  They cross much faster.  The traffic is so much worse than it used to be that often it takes several minutes before we can get across the streets. 

Our third ride option is when we past the "big hill" and continue down the trail.  It involves crossing the river 2 more times and going through a very busy intersection--then finally you get to the good trails.  The first part of the good trails has so much gravel that we have to do a lot of walking.  Consequently, we haven't gone that way a single time this year. That is the ride that Ellen and I used to do with Ranger and Cruiser both days--every weekend we could. 

We don't quite know what to do.  When Dante doesn't want to go fast, there isn't much we can do.  Ellen isn't the type to beat a horse up going to slow, I am glad to say. 

I went through the same thing back when I had Mingo--which is one of the reasons I usually rode him by myself.  He just couldn't keep up with the big guys.  I did canter him a lot more than Ellen canters Dante.  It helped me keep up, but Mingo never got hyper if I cantered him all over the place.  Dante does--and Ellen isn't comfortable with that.

Ellen is spending time trotting to catch up with us.  She also "pre-trots."  When we are going to trot she starts trotting earlier than us to close up the gap.  Dante used to be a little slow with his trot transitions.  By the time they would get going, we would be way down the trail.  Pre-trotting solved that problem.  She also worked on improving his transitions, so that helped, too.

It is all so frustrating when it takes 45 minutes before we get to the "big hill."  (When I rode Cruiser there by myself, we could make it to the "big hill" and back in 35 minutes--round trip.  We did do some fun cantering.) 

Most of the time, Ellen and I just ride the easy way, because we can just cross the river, and right away we are on the better trails.  We want to ride the other trails, but we keep finding that we aren't having as much fun.

We won't give up.  The cooler weather will help--and we must go to see the beautiful fall wildflowers!  The foliage is so pretty, too.  When it is cooler, there is less traffic--and few motorcycles.  The whole ride is better.