We've just been puttering

Phebes left eye has been tearing ever so slightly. Because of her mother's history of ERU this puts me into an emotional tizzy, anything at all with the eye. The vet gave us some ophthalmic ointment and she's looking good again. I don't plan any serious work with her until she's 100%. So we have been puttering. Doing ground work things, yeilding her hind quarters, backing with a physical cue (pointing finger) and coming back to me with a physical cue (fingers come here motion), ground tying, lots of kisses, rubbing, and scratching. I have two long work days ahead so she will get those for rest as well, then I have to figure out what's next? Only three weeks or so away from our final attempt this year.

For the first time ever I'm concerned about our "slowness" which is a good thing (the slowness), unless we are too slow to complete. On our long rides at certain points she has been stopping, and cocking her foot like...let's take a break, K? When I check her respiration, her pulse, her hydration, and her gait, all is well. I think we are out there SO LONG now compared to previous rides that she is kind of mentally over it at that point. We've continued on and all was well. We've had no problem with pulse recovery and have had some amazingly low in motion pulse rates at various times. So I think she's fine. It doesn't seem that adding a long ride again between now and the end of the month is necessary. We will likely attempt some shorter rides with a little better trotting speed, or not, however it happens to work out. But not until Friday at the soonest. ~E.G.