Ride Bear 25: We remember how to do a proper LD!

I know, I'm such an absentee landlord blogger.

So last weekend, Dixie and I went to a local ride, Ride Bear, to do an LD with a brand-new endurance pair! M has an adorable opinionated Haflinger named Fetti, and last weekend was their debut ride. Dixie'd had several weeks totally off, with nothing to do but eat tons of hay, hay pellets, and beet pulp. She was looking much less like a greyhound, and I was hoping she would be feeling good.

Dixie was SO excited to see the trailer! She loaded great, hauled quietly (ridecamp, in Gilroy, was maybe an hour away), came off the trailer and had a quick look around, then started eating.


Camp, before it filled up.


Majestic. Fastidious. Immaculate.


In the morning, Dixie had a tiny meltdown when the 50s left, but not too bad. There were maybe 15 LD riders, so we just let the first 4-6 leave then we headed out. Our ride strategy, such as it was, was to make the mares walk for the first couple miles. The only real hills of the LD were in the first couple miles, and we didn't want them to get frothy and go insane at the start. We hopscotched for a bit with Julie Suhr (on a very green chestnut) and her friend, but eventually we got in front and stayed that way. A guy on a cute spindly little Arab passed us and towed us along for a mile or so, then we fetched up on Pete and Leslie and rode the rest of the day with them.



Pete and Leslie are gaited riders. Pete was working on his homebred SSH/Arab gelding's first AERC completion, and he'd wheedled his wife into keeping him company on their good TWH mare Ladyhawke. Sadly, Ladyhawke took an instant dislike to my precious angel Dixie, so Leslie and I had to stay pretty far apart, but other than that, everybody got along great and seemed to pace well.



We had one away vet check. Everybody pulsed down right away and vetted through with no problems. Some awesome volunteers offered us food and held horses while we headed to the porta potty. If my horse develops superpowers, it's from this mutant carrot I fed her at the vet check:



M and I were a few minutes late leaving the check and we had to put the pedal down to catch our friends, but the mares were in great shape and we just plowed along for a couple miles and caught up to P & L.



We saw a whole family of mule deer. They were super cute :) but I don't think I'll ever get used to these spookily tame California animals. Are there really so few hunters? I mean we rode down a trail less than 50' from three adults and two bambis and they didn't even bother to wander away. You can see a deer silhouetted under the tree:



And just a couple miles from the finish, I saw a boar! My very first pig sighting ever. I've seen deer in every state I've ever lived in, but this is my first boar sighting. I was very glad that he was across the ravine looking for acorns - boar can be pretty scary.



Dixie and I were in at 12:05 and pulsed down at 12:07. She had a great CRI (56/48) and generally spent all day trying to pull my arms out of their sockets. I was, as always, incredibly proud of her!

After we vetted out and visited with our friends, I took Dixie to the hose (a hose! LUXURY!) and washed her off, then let her roll a couple times. I packed the trailer, talked some more, and realized I was totally completely done at 2 pm. There wasn't any food for hours and hours yet, and it was 90+ degrees, and my house was just a couple hours away. So we totally skipped the dinner and awards ceremony and headed home.

No news is good news

Wednesday Dixie and I had a very nice ride with CM who rides Mama. I don't think I've gone out with just Dixie and Mama before, and I figured they'd be ok but I was a wee bit worried - Mama is very much the omega horse, and Dixie is the Queen Bitch. They were great together. CM and Mama do ok alone, but Mama won't lead in a group (until she turns the Magic Corner to head home!) So Dixie and I led out.

We did the Mines, kind of. When there's snow on the rocks in the canyon, we cut up the side of the hill and ride above the mine canyon. 4.0 miles, 1:18, 3.1 mph. The really nice thing about Mama is that she walks fast! She can't walk at 4.5 mph like Dixie can when she's really working it, but Mama moves out really well for a QH. We talked about trotting and cantering the nice bits when the weather warms up - the trails were really soggy that day. A very nice ride.

Today I pushed Dixie for a faster average - we did 6.03 miles in 1:38, a 3.7 mph average. That includes about two miles of slow warmup and cooldown, and that's definitely a solid pace for us. She was tired but not exhausted on the way home. I saw a coyote - neither Dixie nor Cersei noticed it though. And Dixie sidepassed about 10' to the left and back when she noticed some evil wicked new gravel on the road - she cracks me up.

There are bad storms coming in to CA this weekend, and the weather service still isn't sure how much snow we'll get next week. I'll definitely ride tomorrow, with S, and maybe Sunday with her as well. Then hopefully I can get in one more faster ride Monday before the snow starts. Double hopeful it won't be much snow and I won't get sidelined for a week again!

I joined AERC a couple days ago!! Once I get my # I'll send in my entry for the Rides of March LD. Will the weather cooperate enough to get Dixie ready for a 30 in two months?! We shall see!


Edit!
The snow's been melting fast this week, and there's a couple of puddles beside the road. And my horse drinks out of those puddles on the way home! Part of me is like "Ewww gross horse, don't drink out of that nasty puddle" and part of me is like "Yes! Drink when you're thirsty! Any time you want!" I've been letting her drink.

I do feel better about her not drinking at the NEDA New Years' ride now. If she'll stop at a puddle to drink, then she'll drink anything. She just wasn't thirsty on that cold day.

BLAH

Winter is blah! I am, surprisingly, not very cold or bothered by the snow, I'm just sick of the lack of sun. And the fact that my horse looks like a yak, so I have to be really careful to not let her work too hard and get too sweaty. And I can't see the trails, so neither can she, so we have to go extra slow lest she step off a ledge and break her leg. It makes for some boring midday rides.

But the wildlife has been spectacular. When you last heard from us, we'd just seen yeti. Since then, I've seen coyotes three separate times!

Right before Christmas, I went out with S and the dogs, and she spotted a coyote on a hill about 30' above us. The horses never saw it, and the dogs never saw it, and eventually we moved on and left it to look for rabbits. Then right after Christmas, we were riding down in the canyon and I spotted the remains of a peacock. Somebody in her neighborhood had a nice young peacock, but a coyote snatched it and ran down in the canyon to eat it. Nothing left but wing feathers and a few tail feathers. As I was driving down the hill back to the highway that day, a coyote ran across the road a little in front of me.

Then yesterday I went out alone with Dixie and Cersei, and ALL of us saw TWO coyotes. Dixie and I were coming up on a fork in the trail, where if we went left we'd go out further and if we went right we'd go home sooner, and we were gearing up to have a big disagreement about which way to turn, when she stopped dead in her tracks and stared straight ahead. I looked too, and saw a big coyote with a cottontail in its mouth. It looked at us for a while, then looked to my left, so I looked to the left and saw (presumably) its mate. The one on the left was smaller, so I'll call that one the female. She stopped for a while and looked at all of us, then circled around to stay about 50' away and rejoined her mate. Cersei, bless her heart, had been snuffling around in the snow, completely oblivious to everything, but she finally noticed them. She puffed up like a hedgehog and started jumping up and down, stiff-legged, barking at them. She started to run over to investigate them, but I called her back and she came. (Of course she came - she really is a remarkably good dog.) Everybody watched everybody else for a bit, then I turned Dixie to the right and we left them alone.

I'd been planning on going left and doing the Mines trail, but I kind of wanted to leave the coyotes to eat their rabbit in peace. I am a softie, I know. :)

Weather permitting, I have a big weekend planned, but I have moments of being totally superstitious and I don't want to jinx it by talking about it!