Persistence pays off

Today was another of those days where I felt like all these slow miles and all this planning and worrying IS actually paying off. I can look at my spreadsheet of distance/time/pace info, and I can look at my horse, and I can really tell she's getting fitter. This is so cool!

I only had an hour to ride, so we did trot/rack sets up and down the short gravel road, then one loop behind the pueblo house. Total was 4.11 miles in 52 minutes, at a pretty respectable 4.6 mph average. I kept the trot/rack sets fairly slow, at about 7 mph, and kept the walk sets fairly fast, around 3.5 or 4 mph. When we got back to the pasture, she wasn't sweaty! YAY!

I stuck with the new plan of keeping Dixie moving and not letting her think about the invisible monsters. When she'd get really nervous and reluctant, I'd let her stop just til she twitched an ear back at me - under 30 seconds - then I pushed her forward again. It worked very, very well - last night it snowed, so we were back in that scary white alternate reality.

After we got back, we worked on trot-out again. She is still all bug eyed about me holding that whip and making her move out, but she's starting to get the idea.

Today was one of those exceptionally beautiful days. The sky was pale blue with tons of huge puffy dramatic clouds, the mountains were beautiful with their patches of fresh new snow, and the roads were mostly dry. As AareneX says, it's good to be alive. And it's very good to be in Nevada.