Wednesday, January 25, 2012 – First Ride in Jupiter

Decided that the only way we’re really going to keep us and the horses fit is to get up early and ride in the morning, then get our work done the rest of the day, at least on days when we aren’t running around, so today we got up with the alarm, had breakfast (both us and the horses) before saddling up and heading out into the neighborhood. Most of the roads around here are dirt and sand, and usually they are very hard-packed and washboardy, but apparently they’ve got some new maintenance regime because this time driving in last Friday, there was no washboard feeling at all. We headed out to the nearest canal and started weaving around the canals and roads for about a little over two hours. At first the horses, particularly mine, was spooking at everything, obviously too much oats and not enough exercise in the last three days (how little time it takes for them to accumulate excess energy when they’re fit!), but eventually they settled down, and we ended up getting a lot of nice canters in. We figure that on shorter rides we have to work them harder in order to build their stamina, so that’s what we did. Great straightaways along the canals make it easy to go fast! Saw a lot of wildlife, too, birds and a turtle and a glimpse of a racoon. You can see some of them if you look carefully at the pix. After we got back, we had our lunch, then we started on the list of chores again. I washed and conditioned the rubber roof on the RV while Hubby did some work on the stabilizers underneath (dodging over-spray from me, of course). Had a relaxing evening, now off to bed!

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