Come morning, I tacked up and we headed on out. Dave was sitting in his Jeep at the trail head. I trotted on over and made sure he was happy with letting us head out. While I was talking with Dave, Hoss decided to pitch a fit about not being allowed to leave. The whip came out, and I backed and whacked him a bit until I had his mind back with me. Another rider said something to the effect of "That's the way to do it!"
Once we were under way, I let Hoss trot out. At this point in a ride, it can be difficult to keep him from overworking himself, so I spend an awful lot of time holding him back and correcting his way of going. He was doing pretty well this morning, though, and we were pretty quickly able to more or less get into a pocket by ourselves.
We caught up to another horse, which didn't really like having him behind her. Both my horse and the other horse tend to do better alone, so it became a bit of a challenge to get away from each other. Eventually I got Hoss moving out away from the other horse and we were briefly in our own pocket again.
Hoss was pretty fresh on this day. Which can make it even more of a challenge to get him through a multi-day ride. I had to do very little encouraging him, and more managing of his forward speed. Over all, he was pretty good on this first day.
We came into the vet check in good time. He drank well and we found our crew bag. Both of us had our lunches, and I vetted him through with some time to spare so he could rest and eat a little more before leaving.
When it was time to leave, Hoss did his typical, but-the-food-is-over-there thing. I don't think I've ever known a horse that could eat so much. So when it's time to leave the vet check, he's pretty sure he's gonna starve to death before we get back to camp. And he'll drag his feet leaving. It'll take a good mile for him to give up on the idea of turning around and going back.
Once Hoss got going again, we kept up a reasonably steady pace until we turned to go over the hill back to camp. The trail was pretty rocky and horrid, so we mostly needed to walk. We trotted as much as we could, but once we got to the really steep stuff, I decided to get off and tail. There was not much point in riding him up, as we had more days ahead and we'd only walk anyway. It was just as good for me to get off him and walk a bit.
After we topped the hill, we'd come halfway from the vet check back to camp, so I gave him his electrolytes before getting back on. Re-energized, he trotted well through the more flat stuff until we came to another uphill. We walked the uphill and were able to trot at a good pace most of the way back to camp.
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