March 11, 2014

Mud and Tipperary Helmets are my Friend

Beautiful spring day today.  70 degrees 38%humidity, nice breeze.  Nice breezes rustle the tree limbs and scrub.  Rustling stuff scares the bejeesies out of Journey.  When the bejeesies get scared out of Journey she scoots forward at a velocity that squeezes her out from under you like she's tooth paste shooting out of the tube.  I rolled right off the back of her and SPLAT.  Flat on my back, and bonked the back of my head.  Journey spun out and headed down a side trail, and I clawed my way up and started calling her.  She came right back to me, and I loved on her and gave her a peppermint.   Then we went on about our business.   She felt the work tonight with the fluffy fur coat she was sweating and huffing up the hills.  We did some sprints on the flats, and walked the rest of it, and tore down the last field for home (Next time I'll make her walk it).    Had a good week.   But I can see from our chart we've got to move on to stabilizing  our ride speed to get rid of the ups and downs in my little chart.




                                    Thank God for mud.  Mud is my friend.  So is my Tipperary helmet.





3 comments:

  1. Glad to hear you're okay! At the Illinois Horse Fair, I just bought a Tipperary Sportage, replacing my probably-15-year-old Troxel. I still don't wear one when conditioning.... I'm finally starting to exercise Arie on the dirt road and he is, um, motivated to say the least. Not spooky, but insistent on wanting to go home faster. I brought out my clippers and did a hack job on his chest and lower neck to help him dry out. Hope to see you somewhere this year!

    Karen

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  2. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh....wear your helmet. If you would see the hole bashed into my old one you'd be convinced. What I wouldn't give for about a mile of dirt road to work on. It would be nice to take advantage of her desire to be forward instead of always torquing her back because of an up or a down. Hard to build a strong canter when you can't go over a couple hundred yards without an elevation change, a muddy hill, or a rocky creek bed! A long, long, long...........flat would be helpful.

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  3. I have a beautiful flat dirt road 2 miles one-way so I can get a nice flat workout out of that! Actually the road is 3 miles one-way but the first mile is asphalt with a grass shoulder on most of it but not all, so I use that first mile as my warmup and cooldown. OTOH: I can't BUY a change in elevation around here! Not a single degree, not without trailering somewhere. I know, I know... I wore helmets when I rode jumpers but when I got out of that I was thrilled not to "have" to wear them anymore, and I never got back in the habit. From my 40 years of owning horses (40 yr anniversary will be this June) I have fallen 3 times total. One of those put me in the ER, didn't have a helmet for any of them....

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