Beautiful day

Ready to go.


What an awesome day. :) Dixie was perfectly well behaved for a 23 mile outing with Diego. I think she is finally turning into an endurance horse, not just a horse that dashed through a couple of LDs - she has an easy little 8-9 mph trot that gets us places without wearing her out. I wish she'd drink better... we hit a lovely little spring-fed trough at 10 miles and she just rinsed her mouth out. But she enjoyed the rare and wonderful green grass at the spring runoff, and she didn't particularly care if she or Dig was in front, and she took care of the things I'd like her to take care of. I don't always ask her to slow down at rocks or hills or washboard roads anymore - I let her decide. She has made a lot of mistakes, but she's finally learning that she has to think for herself for some things.

C and Dig.


The day started off near 90 and cloudless. We took our time working north through the foothills, then we picked up a good pace headed east to the other side of the valley.

We rode to them hills over thar~


The trough was at the other side, up a little ways back into the hills. Dixie ate a lot of grass and sort of thought about drinking. We went a bit further up into the hills on the east, but the road we picked, while very pretty, was slow and didn't lead anywhere, so we cut cross-country and got back down to the pipeline road. I think the clouds came up while we were up at the spring - when we got back down to the valley floor, the temperature had dropped nearly 10 degrees and there were stunning huge clouds everywhere. It even looked like it was raining in parts of Reno!

The color balance on the pictures came out terribly. It's not actually a uniform gold out there - the sage is, well, sage green, there are little blue-green plants here and there, the cheatgrass is dead and almost white, and the other spring flowers are dead and various shades of gold. The sky really WAS that blue, and the clouds were amazing, and the wind was blowing just hard enough to make me totally comfortable, and it was awesome.

Don't point that damn camera at me, UNTIE ME RIGHT NOW!


When I got back, I took some foot photos so you can see how her feet look after 20 miles barefoot in the sand and rocks. Front left - too much flare at the quarters, I should start touching them up between trims.



Front left again.


Rears - I've been keeping the outside quarters of her rears rolled up off the ground to hopefully stop the flare there. Look at that stress ring that's almost grown off of her hooves - I wonder what caused that? If I kept obsessive records maybe I'd know, sigh.


Well shit! Front leg post rinse - those damn bell boots rubbed her pretty good. So much for them.


I am officially pronouncing Professional Choice No-Turn Bell Boots a don't buy. They're not amazingly sturdy, the customer service isn't amazingly great, and they rub! FFFfffff.

Of course Dixie didn't act like her legs bothered her in any way shape or form. She is so frighteningly stoic. It feels like a ton of responsibility to try to watch her at all times and guess how she's feeling.