We could do that three times

I had a nice conditioning ride today. Dixie got totally fired up when I started putting her boots on! It was super cute :)



She was really pretty good. She had good impulsion most of the time (and even when she felt like she was plodding along, she was still trotting at 8.5 mph!) She listened well and let me pick the speed. She tried hard.



We went 16.5 miles in 2:43, 6.1 mph. I'm pretty happy with that - I sent her up two huge hills and made her stand for a while at the cow trough near the midpoint. I tried to keep it very endurance-y - we moved out at a trot or pace whenever we could, we only cantered a couple of spots, and when we did walk, I kept her marching briskly instead of zombie-horse plodding.



We both felt pretty perky when we finished. I think we could do that three times! (16 miles is about a third of a 50.)



Fire! It was a prescribed burn, whew.



I got a picture of the Pasture Bunny, finally. :) Dixie is totally incorrigible - she twirls her head and "herds" the bunny. Like cats and goats, the bunny didn't seem too awed by Her Majesty's Displeasure.

I think we can, I think we can!

I had a totally lovely ride today. Cersei, Dixie, and I headed out to meet Zach. Zach and I independently decided that 15 miles was plenty the week before a 50. (Thanks, ~C!) Last fall Cersei was fine on a 15 mile ride, so I figured she would be again, and she loves to go.

I'm not going to link the GPS info - after we got back, I unstrapped it from the saddle and stuck it in my pocket without turning it off, so there's an hour of bonus walking-around-the-property info in there. My best extra lap was 2.1 mph, apparently. :rolleyes:

Anyway, we headed out for just under two hours and did 8.6 miles at 5.6 moving mph. Coming back was shorter and a bit faster - 7.22 miles in 1:20 at 6.7 mph. Total distance was 15.95 miles.

I rode in a Myler curb that Dressage in Jeans loaned me. (If you haven't read her blog before, go start at the beginning - she has some great stuff in her archives.) This was actually our second ride in the Myler. The first ride went quite well, but this one, not so much. I had great brakes but no lateral steering, so if she felt like blowing through my suggestions to, say, turn right at a crossroads, it got really ugly. If anyone ever draws an endurance caricature of me and Dixie, I want it to be titled "Does all the cussing really help?" At least there was no one around to hear it :)

I also rode in front boots. I don't think they fit quite right :( and I'm pretty sure the rear boots don't fit at all anymore. How long do hooves keep changing shape?! I will take pictures & measurements tomorrow and consult Mel the boot guru, but I'm really thinking about doing two loops barefoot and just booting her for the rockiest loop. I'll probably decide last minute on that.

The weather was just glorious going out. Sunny, big puffy clouds, mid-50s, a pleasant breeze at my back. Lots of dirt bikes and quads - I saw a pirate-flag quad and thought of AareneX :) Dixie's gotten to where she doesn't really mind motorized vehicles. I always pull her off the trail/road and she stands stock-still and watches very intently as the wheeled things go by, then we follow them or ride away from them, no problem.

The bad thing about riding from home - or riding from any one spot regularly - is that no matter how far you usually ride, there's always a point where you almost always turn around. For me and Dixie, we hardly ever go past the fence in the middle of Hungry Valley, about 7 miles out. She was utterly appalled when I led her through the gate and shut it behind us. Human! Do you not see the so-called "cow" demons? Do you not hear the buzzing of the devil bikes? Can't you see how the very ground is a different color, how the sky has grown ominous??

I just waited her out. Zach was headed my way, and we'd gone about as far as I wanted to head out, so we very slowly inched further up the valley. The cows stared at us for a while then went back to eating. Cersei, who appeared to be just as energetic as ever, ran in circles around us and begged to chase the cows. Some dirt bikes went by. Eventually we evaded the Gorgon-gaze of the cows and trotted another mile up the road and found Zach.

He was freezing. I thought he was just underdressed til we turned around. I was wearing a lightweight wool long sleeved top and a puffy vest and a Camelbak, and of course my helmet covers the back of my head, and I could not feel a bit of the wind through all that. But facing the wind? Man, it was kinda cold!

We took off at a fast trot / slow canter. Dixie discovered a new low gear and managed to canter at 9.5 mph. It's so nice. She managed to rack and pace a bit with the front boots on, which is also nice. And we didn't actually go balls-to-the-wall the whole way home - we'd stop and walk fairly often, because...

Cersei ran out of gas. My poor dog! First she started lagging behind because she couldn't quite canter fast enough anymore, then she ran out of canter entirely and just trotted. Once she got that tired, we walked quite a bit.

Zach and I split up by the radio towers. His mom had trailered down to the arena to meet him, and I was going to cut home behind the sand pit. Dixie, as always, abandoned her buddy without more than a token whinny, and I faced two very slow miles with a very tired dog and a very very hot horse. I was finally really glad to be riding in the curb - I'd let Dixie walk / slow gait a hundred yards, then stop, turn, and wait for Cersei to drag on up the trail. Dixie felt like she could've galloped home at any point in the whole ride. She felt totally fresh, like she had all the gas in her tank that poor Cers was lacking.

I feel so bad for my poor dog! I had no idea she'd get so tired. She is demoted back to 8 or 10 mile buddy. She had her ears back and she looked so tired and upset, and I just kept telling her what a good dog she was and how we were almost home. When we finally got home, I tied up Dixie and sat down on the ground and just loved all over Cersei - didn't even take the saddle off first. She's such a champ, and if there'd been any way to get her home sooner I would've. I fed her dinner as soon as Dixie was taken care of, then extra dinner a couple hours after that, and she's sacked out by the fire now.

But on a more positive note, I feel much more confident about Dixie's level of fitness. I think with any luck we'll do a fine slow first 50 next week.

Springy!

Today was just beautiful so I spent a lot of time outside. The highest outdoor temp I saw on our little house thermometer was 62! 62 and sunny with pretty clouds and breezy - but Mississippi breezy, not Nevada "breezy."

Here's the totally awesome mounting block. Cersei is included for scale. That's an outdoor-only tennis ball in her mouth.


Dixie's mouth is healing, but it's not well yet. I slathered more Desitin on it. She was mad about it. It had better hurry up and heal because the trails are ready!


I drove out into Hungry Valley to check, and the roads are definitely rideable. There's a ton of small new potholes, but the verges looked fine to ride at any speed. And there's some truly enormous mud puddles, but nothing you can't ride around.



Zach and I are going to do 30-35 miles this weekend. There's a NEDA ride, and his mom would probably take me too, but none of us really wants to haul all the way to Silver Springs. Zach rides faster than me, so I'm thinking I'll leave my house before he gets ready to leave his barn in Palomino Valley and I'll ride up as far as I can and meet him. Then we'll head down to LV, do the loop around the lake, and I'll go back up toward PV with him to get my mileage as high as I want. It'll be a good workout for Dixie without asking too much of her a week before RoM.

I have officially decided that horses are better than trucks. Creeping along down a potholed sand road is like sitting the trot on a halter horse that keeps tripping. It was awful. Much better to ride. :)

I made a raised bed! I think I will blog it over at Fugly to Fabulous, because having a garden in my sandpit backyard definitely qualifies as fug to fab. I tossed most of the pitiful "sod" over the fence to the hens.


Speaking of hens, one of the mini-Leghorns has gone broody. Leghorns aren't supposed to go broody, but I guess she didn't read the memo. I think I should go with it and try to get a rooster. If she can stick with it and raise some chicks, yay! I emailed two people on Craigslist with free/cheap roosters and hopefully one of them will get back to me. Baby chicks are the cutest things ever in the history of ever, but I really don't want to brood them myself. Much better to let a momma hen do it.

Spring rambling

We're back in a period of absolutely beautiful weather here, and I've had two more lovely rides. A few thoughts:

I love that pommel bag. I've started carrying water for the dog in one bag and the camera in the other bag. And I figured out a clever way to strap the GPS on the pommel with some carabiners and the bag straps! Carabiners are just as important as vet wrap and duct tape, and they don't get enough credit, IMO.

I think the boots are working out ok. She seems to move ok in them - up and down hills like a mountain goat, and she can canter in them. I made sure the pastern straps were way looser today and didn't have any rubs.

I've been looking through the USGS maps, and I have some names for places. Today we went up in the Coyote Hills. Here's a view back over the lake toward Peavine:




This picture from over the weekend is of the Petersen Range. It's just west of Red Rock Road, right on the CA state line Apparently the easiest way to get there is from Hallelujah Junction, California, and you can dig for opals and smoky quartz. Cool, huh?


I've been taking pictures of the wildflowers, too. It's amazing how the greeny-grey boring sagebrushy desert has exploded in blooms of different sizes and colors. I'm going to keep adding to the set - there's a blood-red shrub I haven't snapped a picture of yet, and a bright purply-pink flower with blooms the size of pencil erasers.

Still haven't remembered to work on the trot-out. Oh well.

Snow far behind

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT

I just wrote a huge post and Blogger ate the whole damn thing and it's my fault for not saving it to the clipboard before I clicked submit. I am just furious. Here is version 2, which is not as awesome as version 1 was.

I'm way behind on reading yall's blogs. Sorry. :(

I think Dixie's in good enough shape to do 2 LDs in mid-June, so I've been riding to have fun and to test out gear, not to get miles or increase fitness. Saturday I rode with all four Renegades, and today I rode with the new crupper. Here's Saturday's ride:

I think Dixie looks awesome right now! Great weight, great muscling - she's totally ripped for a TWH. And look at all that amazing mane!


I put all four boots on.


I think maybe the pastern straps were too tight. When I took the boots off two hours later, she had some warm pink spots on her heel bulbs where it looked like the hair was worn, and I'm pretty sure it would've turned into rubs. Renegade people, any advice? Here's the front and back pictures, if they help.

We rode up in the hills toward Antelope Valley, and I got this cool picture of the storm moving down on Reno.


Cersei hung in there with us.


Dixie met some burros. The word burro always makes me think of burrow owls, which makes me think of that Dead Milkmen song. (Warning! It's offensive. And weird. And funny.) Anyway, Miss Hateful didn't pin her ears or squeal or kick or bite the fence - she loved them, even though they didn't live in a hole in the ground. It was totally adorable.


After I pried Dixie away from the burrow owls I turned on the video camera and cantered on home. Warning! No matter how smooth you think the canter really is, it makes for a very seasick video. Still, it was totally cool that I could do such a thing.

Right as we got back in the neighborhood, it started snowing again. My husband edited this and subtitled it - thanks, sweetie!

Snowy Summer from Funder on Vimeo.

The day was actually really pleasant. It was cold when a cloud was blocking the sun, and pleasantly warm the rest of the time. Just weird Nevada summer snow. I'm not complaining :)

I'll put up today's ride tomorrow. And read some blogs!

Green

When I was 16, my parents went to New Mexico to paint a friend's house- kind of a working vacation. I got bored and they thought I'd enjoy it too, so they flew me out to join them. It was summer, the "wet season" where there was a pretty predictable gentle rainstorm every afternoon at 2 pm.

The land looked completely alien to me. Warm tan hills, with rocks and scrubby grey bushes. The locals all kept talking about how green it was, and it was like they weren't speaking the same language as me. Green was back home, green was an explosion of bright sun-dappled verdant jungle lushness. These brown hills with the grey shrubs weren't even in the same ballpark. I didn't understand how anybody could live in such a weird barren place.

I have no idea why 16 year old me thought New Mexico was so gross and brown while 31 year old me loved Nevada at first sight. They look pretty much the same, except Nevada is more extreme - bigger hills, better mountains framing the view, higher elevation.

Also, we have passed the point where only the natives would think it's green here. The sagebrush is respectably green - kind of spring green with a greyish tint. There's grass everywhere! All the little brown hills look like they've been Astroturfed. I know it'll all burn up soon, but man it's gorgeous now!

Tomorrow: Yellow!

Cursed!

Yall remember when I rode somewhere for a while? That was off to the northwest, behind the airport. All the rest of my riding has been to the east or northeast. I really enjoy it, but motorbikes are allowed to the east, and they're technically not allowed to the west. I thought I should go back to the west and scout it out.

Well, Monday the weather kind of sucked. Usually, Peavine looms dramatically over everything, looking like the Lonely Mountain:


On Monday it was 50, very windy, and huge snowclouds were rolling down from the Mountain:


We went out anyway, but my heart wasn't in it and we called it quits early.

Today I woke up with new resolve: Make horse wear boots. Make horse explore western hills. Take pictures and cool GPS tracks to share with blog friends. Well, two and a half out of three is pretty good, right? I think I'm cursed to not get GPS info from that area!

The GPS battery was dead. I could've sworn it was fully charged and turned off before I stuck it back in my backpack, but apparently it was fully charged and turned ON. And I strapped the brand new slightly bulky expensive camera very securely on the horse, but I only took a few pictures - I dare not try to fumble it out while trusting Dixie to stand still on the side of a mountain, so I have to dismount and fumble it out.

I got a few pictures, at least!


Here's the adorably named Swan Lake, an alkali lake:


See the snowy mountains on the right of this photo? They're the ones that Rides of March is held at the base of.


Later, I was leading Dixie through a redneck valley filled with dead appliances and car parts, all full of bullet holes, when I noticed... a house? It was SO weird - there's NO real roads anywhere nearby! I took one very quick iPhone picture, hoping to get the GPS info from the pic, then mounted up and we rode out of there.


Of course, it didn't grab the GPS coordinates on that one. :( And the mystery house is newer than the sat photos in google maps - but it really was there!

The boots stayed on, no rubs, and Dixie seemed to get used to them pretty well. At first she cantered like a padded horse, but she figured it out eventually. I walked and jogged a lot - almost all of the downhills - and I feel like I broke something in my knee. Cersei is sacked out, doing her Dead Dog impersonation. Time to cook dinner!

Blow me

OMG, it was SO windy today! Cersei was sure that she was going to explode if she didn't go somewhere, so I rode anyway, but man it was windy. My face is windburned. My helmet would've blown off my head if it wasn't for the chin strap. My horse went noticeably slower into the wind (even though "into the wind" was headed home!) But at least the dirt bikes weren't out :)

We did six miles in just under an hour again. Dixie's rack continues to improve - it's about 10 mph, and she can keep it going longer and longer. She likes to (step) pace on slight downhills, which is fine with me and just as fast. I was very happy with how steady she was, even in that wind.

It's funny, the weird regional superstitions we develop. In Memphis, I would never have ridden in that kind of wind - horses get stupid when it's windy! But out here, it's incredibly windy like 30% of the time, so the horse and I are learning to deal with it. And it's not like we were all wusses back home - we'd ride at speed on ground no sane Nevadan would walk her horse through.

Oh experienced endurance peeps, tell me how to deal with trails with "waves" in them! You know how they get hollowed out from quads and dirt bikes, where the crests are 15-20 feet apart and the troughs are 1-2 feet deep? It seems like there's no good gait, there's no way to stay centered on the horse, and it feels like it's really rough on the horse. Almost all of the walking we did was because the road was wavy - I won't ride that trail again, but how am I supposed to deal with it in the future?

I have this love-hate relationship with Dixie's mane. Yeah, sometimes I do think longingly about pulling it - it'd be so thin and short! It wouldn't get tangled in my reins! But it's just beautiful. Today in the wind it was like a living thing - it looked like a sea anemone waving around my hands, or like Medusa's hair, or like foamy waves crashing on the beach. And yes, it totally got in the way of the reins. Sigh.

Got a new camera. It's too new to take riding, but I did get a nice glamour shot of Dixie before we headed out. I made it my profile pic, but here's a link to the bigger version.

Always fun

It snowed some more today. We were completely unimpressed by it. I'm not even surprised that it's April and snowing! Random snow flurries are the new normal.

Yesterday I rode for a while and went some places, but that's the best I can tell you. Yep, I forgot the GPS! Eeek! I think we got close to the end of American Flat Road, circling around behind the Stead airport. I rode on land that's not supposed to have dirt bikes, and of course there were 5-6 dirt bikes, and of course Dixie lost her freakin' mind. We spent 20 minutes stuck on the side of a hill, doing one rein stops - every time I'd tell her to walk and point her down the hill, she'd try to take off and I'd haul her back around in a circle. It was way too far to walk, so I didn't want to get off, and she was way too hot, so I didn't want to let her trot down the hill. Yes, babe, dirt bikes do make scary noises, but you've heard them before, and I promise they won't eat you. Sigh.

When we got back, I worked a bit on trying to teach the sidepass from the ground with clicker training. I think the first step is to move a back leg over, then a front leg, then back-front-back-front. The first step of "move your back leg over" is "move your back leg, just a bit, without moving the others, and without going forward", so that's what we worked on. At first Dixie wanted to move forward, then she wanted to ignore the tapping, then she gave me a tiny bit of what I wanted, then she started moving into the pressure - sidepassing perfectly toward my whip arm. WTF? Took a break from it and did some reverse and some head down, then tried one more time and got a bit of what I was looking for and quit for the day.

Today I went out and did more clicker training. First we worked on the sidepass lesson again - she was a bit better, so I just repeated it a couple times on each side and then quit. Then we tried targeting, since there's actually a traffic cone in her paddock already. I am trying to gradually stretch out the distance so that one day she'll walk over, touch the cone, then walk back to me for her treat. Right now she just gets frustrated and starts pawing.

Whenever Dixie gets frustrated or impatient, she paws. She's always done it. It's actually what she's doing on trailer rides - not real kicking, just "why am I tied up standing still" pawing. I don't think it's something that I can effectively punish, and I've been hoping it would go away on its own, but it hasn't. Hmm.

Anyway, I did a bit of rope desensitization with her legs (not popular), then I played with her tail. Partly just because I should be able to, and partly because I think we need a crupper for down hills. I am not at all eager to actually try putting a crupper on her and then riding, so right now I just get off when the saddle scootches forward on downhills. But maybe one day I'll get up the nerve to do this insane thing, so I'm getting her used to having her tail messed with.

The last thing we did was at-liberty backing up. The first time, Dixie gave me one step of grudging reverse. Then we walked forward, stopped, and I asked her to back up again. She came forward and sideways and tried to slam me with her hip, so I smacked the hell out of it with the lead rope I was carrying. She leapt away, slung her head once, stopped, and looked at me. I said "Come here" and she walked over. She stopped when I raised my hand, then started backing up (straight and with impulsion!) when I said "back up." Much better! She's never easy, but she's always fun.

Snug Bug

It's hard to tell in the picture, but it's been snow/raining all day. I didn't want Dixie to get soaked and cold, so I put her spiffy new purple blanket on her. She's annoyed about being in the pen, and that picture is actually mid-paw. I love my evil mare!

Where's my lamb?

We have some huge weird weather front rolling in. It's drizzling rain and so grey you can't see any of the mountains, and possible snow tomorrow. It was so nice and springlike for almost all of March, and now, at the very end, this weirdness!

I went out and handwalked Dixie today. It was way too windy to ride - gusts of probably 50 mph and sustained winds of 25 or 30 mph. I wanted her to have a chance to get out of the pen though. She is still shedding. I don't think she'll ever stop; I think she eats just to have the energy to grow long white hair and have it fall out all over me. I guess that's good if it does snow on her tomorrow.

I rode Saturday, our first ride after RoM, and I forgot to post it. It feels like we've crossed the Rubicon - now we both know what we're capable of, when before we'd thought maybe we could do it. And even beyond our changed expectations, her fitness level has noticeably improved! We have a little section of the trail where I let her canter as far as she wants, and she went 3x as far as usual - then walked a bit and asked to rack again. Hell yeah!

Bliss, EEEEEK, bliss

Man, today was just amazingly nice. After yesterday's rainy windy blah, today was warm and sunny with calm winds. The high was near 60! For some reason, I thought that Rides of March was two weekends away - it's actually 3 weeks off. Anyway, I figured I should do half the race distance today, then do hill work or short rides until maybe 4 days before the ride, then let Dixie rest up. (Is that a good plan? I only ride every other day or every two days, to give her recovery time.) So today's plan was 15 miles, as fast as possible, hopefully in 3 hours.

First, I had to clean my nasty nasty sheddy beast.


I sort of faux cross tied her and set to work. She pinned her ears the whole time, but she stood like a rock while I got her mostly cleaned up. (Look how long her mane is getting! She's such a My Little Pony.)


Dixie never pawed until I started futzing around with the saddle. She seems unhappily resigned to her fate when I'm just brushing her, and ready to GO already when I start tacking up. I am taking this as a good sign that she's happy with her work.

We did part of the mines, all of Palomino Valley, and part of the canyon. We managed 13.51 miles in 3:05, which is 4.4 mph. Garmin. It was pretty hilly, though - 1,925 feet of elevation gain! I am very pleased with how well she moves out even when she doesn't want to. That's a "both of us" accomplishment - I have raised my expectations for her, and stuck to them, and she's lived up to them. She doesn't dawdle along like a WP QH - she walks out when I tell her to walk.

I took Cersei, of course. Remember how I've been turning around halfway down the Palomino Valley roads, because of the pit bulls? Yeah, they were loose today. They are the stupidest-looking backyard bred "tough" pit bulls I've ever seen in person. Anyway, these two clowndogs came running up to us right as I noticed a pack of dirt bikes and quads tearing down the hill in front of us at about 40 mph. I briefly considered that maybe I was going to die, then I gathered up my (PURPLE!) reins and rode it out. The dogs came charging up, I yelled "GO HOME!", Cersei thought about circling around to sniff one, I started calling her back, and the bikes went ROARING by. One of the pits had to go chase the bikes and Dixie leapt and spun and I lost a stirrup. I jammed my foot back in quick as anything, calmed my horse, checked to make sure my dog was ok, and decided it was time to walk. Dixie was a snorting retard for about half a mile, then she calmed down. I snapped the reins back on the bit and she started pawing for me to get back on her already. Awww :)

We trotted a bit and step-paced a bit down the last flat stretch, then very slowly climbed a very large hill. It looks like it was about 800' of ascent in a mile and a half. A 10% grade, if I'm figuring it right? Pretty steep, regardless. Dixie was only managing about 3 mph, but she was very game. Good heart in that mare. We found a few clumps of fresh green grass on the way up, and those perked her up considerably. Found a clean puddle at 7 or 8 miles, but she didn't want a drink.

On the downhill side, the road was sloppy sandy mud, and I just wasn't comfortable letting her trot or gait down that steep slope on that slick footing, so I insisted she walk. But Dixie had figured out that she was close to home - she'd turned the "magic corner" - and she really stretched out and rolled down that hill at 5 to 5.5 mph. It was awesome! Then once we hit flat ground again, she took off in a beautiful easy step pace. A little taste of the future, I hope - I could ride that walk and that pace for 50 miles, sure!

The PV loop is only 10 miles, so I thought I'd finish off with the Canyon trail - it's about 6 miles out-and-back. We headed down the hill to the canyon and made it a couple miles down the trail before I executed a strategic withdrawal. The canyon trail is very pretty, but it's hard to make any time. You'll get 50 feet of good trail then a small section of rocks, then maybe another 20 feet, then more rocks. They're not pointy gravel rocks - either big rounded river rocks or big broken up river rocks. Slippy or jagged. I wouldn't ask any horse to trot/gait over them without boots or shoes and pads. It's just asking for a slip and a pulled tendon, or a bad footfall and a stone bruise. Not worth it.

I got some leads on extra trail, though. The big hill is crisscrossed with jeep trails of varying quality, and I took a couple short doglegs down a few nice looking trails, just to get them marked on the GPS. None of them look like they're actually driveways, so maybe we'll go explore around there this week. And I found an offshoot mini-canyon off of the big canyon - the sat photos look like it's a couple miles of trail. I will have to go out there with S and Summer - she'll really like that.