At last, the temps are warm enough for an enjoyable, un-bundled ride! We had been awakened early by our neighbor leaving, (they began packing up about 6:00, before the sun came up, and finally drove off about 7:30), but stayed in bed, sleeping off and on until about 9:30 before getting up and starting our chores. After breakfast, we headed out to saddle the horses, and saw that another day trailer had come in and were saddling up as well. They were gone by the time we finished, and we left shortly thereafter. As I feared, Apollo was like a stick of dynamite, looking for any excuse to blow up. Before going very far, I got down and tried to lunge him with my Mccarty line in an effort to blow off some steam, but he wasn’t into it, so I got back on and we took a side trail in an effort to get his mind on the job at hand. He did okay, but still was bundled up. He finally burst out on a muddy crossing, and I had to get down and run him around a bit, twice in about a quarter mile. Finally, when we had a choice between a side trail and a straight utility line road, I elected for the latter, figuring I just needed to walk him until he settled down, and that what we did. It must have been close to two miles of walking, but he finally started to drop his head and calm down a bit, enough for me to trust him at a jog. Thankfully, Hubby did a great job of keeping mama Clio behind us, until Apollo was calm enough for her to step up to a trot and pass us, and we soon burned some excess energy with a long trot and even a short, controlled canter. The trails here are mostly grass, but with all the rain there were a few muddy spots. Mostly they were utility lines and trails that bordered fallow fields, but we finally accidentally happened onto the blue trail, which followed a Texas-sized creek (we presume the Waxahachie) for a while, and was very nice, more like what we prefer, before joining back up on the red trail which was a straight road. Eventually, we found the green trail, which, like the blue trail, was more to a liking. By this time, Apollo was back to his normal self, and I was able to relax and really start to enjoy the ride. A nice trot and even a little canter as we headed home, finally wearing off that extra energy. All told, it was about 7.5 miles and we were out almost 4 hours, perfect for what we needed to do. Can’t say the trails are really attractive, but they certainly served the purpose today. After multiple premonitions about ending up on the ground on my butt, I took every precaution to avoid that, it succeeded, yeah! Settled down for the evening, even deciding to have a cocktail, in order to use up some orange juice someone brought us over a week ago. Good excuse, right? : -)
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