Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2019 – Errands and First Ride Day at River Rising

Hubby's little throat tickle yesterday has blown up into an all out episode of cold and/or flu symptoms, so he wasn't up for riding today, or even going with me to run errands. Lola and I headed down to nearby Newberry to the Tractor Supply, and stopped at Winn-Dixie in High Springs for a few last minute things, and got back to camp in plenty of time. I fed us a late breakfast, then I saddled up Flash to go out on our first ride here. He was so full of energy, he pranced for an entire mile before I could get him down to a walk. After about a quarter mile of patience, I finally let him increase his speed, and his gait of choice was a canter, which we did for at least 2-3 miles before he finally "slowed" to a largo (the fast gait of a Paso) and did that for a few more miles. He would occasionally slow down for a brief 100 feet or so, then step right back up again. It was quite an invigorating ride! The trails here are all sand footing, mostly hard enough to not cause any problems, and the forest here is truly old Florida, with lots of live oak and huge old growth trees. We started on the River trail, which is probably the prettiest as it meanders through the forest and by the river, naturally, but many of the other trails here are long straightaways, giving us lots of opportunities to really move out. Our ride came to a sudden slowdown when my stirrup broke, and though I tried several different methods of fixing it, I didn't succeed, so we ended up mostly walking the 1.5 miles back to camp. I got Hubby some tools and he drilled some holes and managed to get it usable again. Meanwhile I have Flash a nice bath, cleaned out the stalls, put down some fresh bedding and put Flash away, only to have him roll in the stall, pretty much erasing his bath. Figures. Giving an animal a bath is probably the most useless expenditure of energy any human can bother to do. Oh, well! I did a bunch more chores and finally managed to settle down for the evening, tired, but glad Flash seems to be in pretty good shape despite his month of inactivity. I'm hoping Apollo will get out tomorrow, we'll have to see how it goes. Hubby feeling slightly better having slept a good part of the day, but despite having had both a flu and a pneumonia vaccine, this is hitting him pretty hard. We guess it is the result of either catching a chill in the barn at Baker, or sick people there walking by coughing and sneezing, of which there was a lot. Hard to escape getting sick when there are so many other people around! Hope he improves tomorrow!

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