Happy happy.

Scruffy winter pony’s still got it!

– Mount Diablo photos from last year!  I checked the NATRC page again and happened to see.. a link to the photos that I’d given up on finding from last year.  Woohoo!

LOVE.

One friend commented that she looks like a Santa Cruz hippie in this photo with the braids.  I can totally see it.  I want to get this framed.
I think this must have been at the start of the ride, even before we mounted up, and after she was declared sound to start.  Channeling our inner relaxed Western Pleasure selves… just standing and de-stressing right before we mounted up.

Through the mercury pond, I think?  Ears forwards, still trucking along.

It really did look like that most of the day.

I’m not sure where this was taken, except that it must have been coming into a check since I had my stirrups dropped! Trot-trot-trot.

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* I can ride the other Haffies w/t/c whereever with no fear.  I lost a lot of my confidence last year when I came off, though, and working Fetti in the arena still scares me.  Three balanced, non-bolting, non-bucking strides absolutely made my day.

** We’re still working on the whole bale bag thing.  Current status: one bale of grass, approx half a bale grass/alfalfa per week.  Great progress over two bales a week.  I do think she’s gained some weight.  It’ll come off again quick enough this spring/summer, so that’s fine.  End goal is to get her to approximately a bale/week again – that’s what she was eating prior to the bale bag switch.

*** This is so exciting, y’all.  It’s so often said that you should be doing 10-15 miles in 2-3 hours before you try your first LD.  It’s been quite literally months since we last did a 5+ mile workout at a 5mph pace, and even then, we’d only get one of those occasionally.

My plan for this ride was to trot everything trottable at whatever speed she wanted.  Jog?  Fine.  Supertrot?  Fine.  But she had to keep trotting and not break to walk after every burst of speed.  We ended up at just a hair under 5mph for the whole ride.  I think this is what we need to work on right now; this is closest to how we go at rides, and it’ll help condition her for the sustained trotting even if it’s not at great speed. Her walk is pretty terrible, so we’ll work with what we’ve got.

I assume that the more we do this 8-mile loop at a mostly-sustained trot, the easier it will be for her and the less recovery time she’ll need between trots and/or the quicker the trots will be.  I’d welcome thoughts from those of you with more experience conditioning (either for eventing or endurance!) – am I totally missing something here?  Does this sound reasonable?