Winter Ride temps in the teens....

We did our 1 mile loop three times working at pairing down her time. Our fastest lap today was 11 minutes. The footing is terrible, frozen, rutted, and the hills slick. Phebes was really good today. No spooking and trotting along nicely as the footing would allow. After we did three laps and beat our previous time, I just walked her out into the woods and did a few hills, walked back in, and cantered up part of the field. We always stop and dismount when we get to the road, and I jog her in on foot up the road. As I dismounted the neighbor's truck came up the road and they slowed down like they could not BELIEVE their eyes...the crazy neighbor lady out riding her horse in this frozen world. It actually wasn't too bad out there until we slowed our pace and then my hands started getting cold even though I was wearing two pairs of gloves! I hand walked Phebes the rest of the way in, and clipped her up in her stall to untack. She was slightly steaming. So I brushed her dry to get her hair to fluff back up while she stuffed hay. I've adopted our now empty stall as a place to tack and untack my horse and I'm really liking it. I can keep a hay bag hanging there for her, and we are out of the wind. A good ride today. ~E.G.