Pre-ride: 2 miles in the enlarged round pen, just getting her attention and the kinks out. 3 miles on trail. The first lap of our 1 mile loop was pretty tense, with her googling around looking for boogers under every rock, tree, bush. On our second lap she started to relax and was walking out nice, the third and final loop we trotted out some. We are really going to have to work on the trotting. She gets going and wants to break into a canter, which is not a problem in a contained area, but out in the open she acts like she wants to go. I hope to get her rating at about 6 mph steady for the first year, we'll worry about speeding up later. Though the first little bit was kind of stressful, it may just be how she is. It seems like if we can get through those first couple of miles without a mishap, she settles in, lowers her head and starts making happy horse sounds, and paying better attention to me. Could it boil down to I'm just not riding FAR ENOUGH to do her any good?
I went over her ride history in my Garmin's memory, and low and behold she has had 21 rides since the first week of September. But I've only been averaging a couple rides a week, and I'm just going to have to do better than that. My Mom seems to be better since her procedures. I am hopeful of better ride days to come.
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