RHR: 52
HR on return: 60
HR 10 min: 44
Average Speed: 5.5mph
Terrain: Moderate to Challenging
I had planned to do a good 25 mile ride this day, but it didn’t happen! After riding Phoenix (my retired endurance horse, 13 yo Arabian) at home three miles, I went down to the YMCA to take a class, and on my way home stopped at the feed store for dog food. At the feed store, I ran across one of my clients, who said, “See you at 2pm!” Oops. It wasn’t in my schedule. I was already later than I wanted to be, and if I waited ‘til 2 to trim that horse, I’d not have time to trailer out at all. So, I admitted the failure to get the appointment in the schedule, and asked if I could come trim the horse right then. Fortunately it worked out. It was better for the client and for me to go ahead and get that horse handled right away. The end result, though, was I didn’t get home until noon. By the time I had lunch and took care of other things, such as dishes and laundry, I didn’t get the trailer hooked up and loaded until 3pm. Crap. Now I’ve hardly any time!
I did manage to get to Cuyamaca and get Hoss saddled and on trail before 4pm. His heart rate when we got there was rather high. He got out of the trailer and immediately decided there was something in the bushes that was intent upon eating him! As a result, his heart rate was elevated and I kept having to remind him I was there. No amount of assurance that nothing was out there was going to convince him. By the time I got him saddled and mounted up, he was no less sure that there was something evil out there, and we spent about a minute discussing the idea that, no, really, he had to head off down the trail and do his job!
We headed out and once we were warmed up, I started asking for a nice trot. This was going to be one of those days, I could tell! While he started out strong, it wasn’t long before he was slowing down below our target trot speed of 7.5 mph. So there was a lot of nudging and cajoling and kicking on my part. We headed up the West Mesa Fire Road, which is a long uphill pull. Frequent nudges and kicks kept him mostly in the target range, but it was annoying! He slows down very gradually, seems to know that if he’s careful enough, I won’t notice. But, I kept an eye on the GPS unit, so I noticed, and just kept pushing. I knew that the trail back down was going to be slower, so I wanted to keep our speed up where we could.
When we got to the point where it was time to head back down, we were just shy of having covered 6 miles, and our average speed was 6.3 mph. Not a good sign. I knew that the way back was rocky and a great deal of downhill too steep to trot. Additionally, this last time I shod him, I took him out of the traction shoes I’ve been using and tried something less aggressive (more on that in a different post). The result is that he’s still figuring out how to use them. When we hit large rocks, he would tend to slip, as he’s accustomed to more traction. So, I’d have to slow him down considerably and do more directing rather than allowing him to find his own footing.
By the time we hit the flat, our average was down to 5mph. I was getting to where I was resigned to not exceeding 5mph on that day. I didn’t think we had enough miles left to elevate it. But as it turned out, we trotted out nicely (Hoss finally seemed to decide that trotting wasn’t so bad; probably didn’t hurt that he’d figured out we were headed back to the trailer), and we ended with a respectable – but still short of our goal – 5.5mph.
We only managed to cover 11 miles. Something of a disappointment considering my goals for the week. Additionally, I would’ve liked to cover more miles and wear him down a bit more, as I knew a friend was coming to ride on Friday, and it would’ve been nice to have a horse that wasn’t a complete idiot on a home trail ride. But, all in all, not horrid. I’ll take it. For now.
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