Today we begin again...looking ahead to the 2010 season.

Phebes and I will shake off the cold this morning, load up, and haul to Brown County State Park outside of Columbus, Indiana for our first LSD training of the 2010 season (which started on Dec. 1st). We will be meeting Christine Eickleberry, Lida Pinkham, Gwen Anrico, and a few other ladies for our first cold weather ride of the season. Since we have cleared the scratches on her front pasterns I will be booting Phebes with her Easycare Easyboot Gloves. We will have to continue bare on the rear because I'm wanting to avoid irritation of the scratches back there, and also do not want that bacteria or whatever causes the scratches to get into the gaiter of the boot. Phebes usually trains bare, but Brown County is one of those places that they have dumped a lot of crushed stone on the trails. So the hoof boots will give me some piece of mind when we move out over those kind of places. Lida boots her gelding Doc too, and Doc just flows down the trail with this huge ground covering trot. He's such a delight to watch. I'll try to remember that I have a camera on my phone and try to get a few shots (have not yet learned to download to my computer), so that will be on my agenda. Phebes and I have been on downtime for a month. She is fat and sassy so today will likely be a challenging (for me) ride. ~E.G.