We are doing just that, now that the weather has broken into spring and we’ve had some dry spells – and the truck is still behaving 🙂

Sully and I have continued to work towards our first LD completion this year. We have had weeks of no riding due to weather or time constraints from the busyness of family life or work. We had some dry days, but slick trails kept us still to only going out one day of the two planned, but managing about 3.7 miles between some time in the ring and the trail itself – which we really only had to cut short due to the fact we were having a standoff with a cow! Sully quite debated pushing this cow around, but I wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t end up leaving me behind if things got hairy, and the other 2 were on their very first ride at the farm out of the ring since their arrival the week before.

Sully’s mane seems to have filled in the one spot that was cut short (knot?) when I got him. His coat is still very soft, he hasn’t shed much yet – but with 22 degree temps still happening overnight, I can understand why!

Then we got a week of perfect dry weather to get us some trail time out hauling out to ride with Robin & Bronson. I am not alone in being impressed by this guy, as I get comments from every vet, body worker, and farrier that has worked on him how cool he is, and he impressed me again – we haven’t done anything worth mentioning since November now – yet I took him to the trail alone to a busy parking lot and he just munched along as I put boots and tack on, no horse around he knew or even could see. We had one minor “Oh my!” over horses at the trailer next to us leaving (they had been on the far side out of sight but walked past us to leave), and he settled right back to what we were doing quickly. The two boys did great again together riding out. Neither has a problem leading or following the other. Since Robin & I both want to be able to ride alone more and feel comfortable with it, we split them apart at the very end, as there are two ways to get back to the trailers from the trail we took back, to see how it went. Sully at first objected but then took off in a huge trot as I asked up the hills to the parking area trail. This was our first ride of any significant distance with all 4 scoots using the new mud straps. Unfortunately I found a decent rub on a hind, but his hoof has changed and may now be the same as the fronts, or just need a heat stretching modification to fit best.

Now the mileage ridden itself is up for debate! I have used endomondo to track my rides for a few years, but plan to use a Garmin 310XT hooked up a to HRM to monitor Sully (slowly putting together the pieces to do so – snagged a used watch on Ebay inexpensive to start). The Garmin of course tracks your movement and distance so it would save my phone battery to use something else on longer rides (yes I know airplane mode helps that, but if I want to actually stay reachable I can’t turn it on) …. I decided to run an experiment – I turned on my App and the 310XT for this ride. Robin also turned on her Endomondo App at the same time/place. And guess what? we got 3 different distances, all 0.5 miles apart from each other! Watch said 5.3; my app 5.8; Robin’s app said 6.2! Hah! No wonder our ride managers go nuts trying to map out the distances for loops 😛

Next we celebrated Doug’s birthday (St Patty’s day). The kids and I made a strawberry ice-cream cake for him; which came out pretty good!
Then Skyler had her ballet/tap visitation night where I actually got to watch her class rather than sit in the lobby. The whole class is so cute, and the teachers are saints for handling all those 6 & 7 year olds!
On the 19th, Prophecy turned 11. Linda gave him some extra cookies and hugs for me. ❤

Spring has sprung and the first day/equinox I managed a short ride (1.5miles) at the barn with Amanda and Cheyenne, and Sully never ceases to amaze me. Grabbed him from the pasture, quick brush and toss a saddle on and go hit the trails. I think he was happy not to be working the ring any!

Friday was just a groom day as he was mess from rain and wind… Sunday we went and rode at Manassass Battlefield with USTR. Pretty big group of 22 folks! We went with the walk-trot group and had a great time! Grabbed him early after breakfast and headed off in 30 degree weather, finished our ride in the 60s with the sun shining the whole ride. Sully was awesome…again dealing with being in an unfamiliar place tacking up chilling out. And he did well with the multiple groups leaving “base-camp,” leading and following in a group of 5. We had a crazy obstacle of downed trees (probably from Friday’s storms) to figure our way around, and he did exactly as I asked with a “send” through the brush (where you can see we have a 0mph for quite a bit sorting that out!)

I can’t believe it is coming up on 3 years since I lost Tesla…and I finally feel like I have a partner again.