Monday, Jan. 11, 2016 – First Ride of the New Year!

After a week of recuperating from completing the book, plus doing a bunch of other mundane stuff, the weather has finally turned perfect and Hubby and I have, at last, been able to take a ride! With the Cattle Drive looming, we simply have to get ourselves and the horses fit before we head up to St. Cloud. Hubby's acupuncture has been doing wonders for him, he's feeling much better, and we have high hopes that this will solve his back problem, if not permanently, at least for a long time. So under gorgeous skies, we saddled up the frisky horses and headed down the driveway. We decided this time to take the dogs, as we'll only be going past a few houses before reaching the canal, then heading back out to the Hungryland WMA. It's not a thrilling ride by any means, but it's nice, and it gets everybody back into the swing of things. Apollo was brilliant, he was so frisky yesterday when I trimmed his feet I was afraid he would be hard to handle at the beginning today, but he seemed so grateful to have something else to do, he was fabulous. The last few days, the horses have been hanging out at the gate, looking longingly down the driveway, so I know they were ready for a change of venue! We did a bit more jogging than we've done in a while, for conditioning as well as to check out Hubby's back, and he was fine when we got back. He's feeling so much stronger, and he's able to sit his horse so much better now that he has improved his posture considerably. Acupuncture seems to be doing the trick! Anyway, another very nice 2 hour ride to start our conditioning, we have plans to do at least 2 more rides this week. We'd love to ride every day, but there's some nasty weather in the forecast, and until it's absolutely necessary, we're still fair weather riders for the most part! And the dogs finally got some exercise, too, Lola's been going crazy with only tennis balls and frisbees to catch!