Trail ride with Z

I have lots of goals for my horse time this year, but one of them is to train and ride a 50 miler with Z. She's had some time off and now I'm so pleased to pick back on and work towards our next challenge. My goal will be to calmly build her stamina and fitness and get a 25 miler done by June and a 50 miler done by fall. This means we need to build slowly, but consistently.

So, started today with just a 4 mile walk. I want to build her joints and muscles so we made sure to walk up and down every hill (builds rump muscles). I thought to trot with her some, but she really wanted to move out at a gallop, so instead of managing her extroversion I decided to keep our first training ride calm and at a walk. We'll be trotting soon enough and I need to know she can maintain a trot on a loose line. I think I would have gotten her too excited working with maintain gait after all her time off today.

We had a nice, nice ride and got home just as the sun was setting. Really great to be back with Z. Next ride, I'll pony a horse and start taking advantage of getting more than one exercised at a time.

I gave her a trim, too. Her fores were quite out of balance with lots of wall on the inside. I didn't want to ask her to cover mileage on those feet, so I trimmed before we left. Trying to bring her heels up on the hinds, but not seeing a lot of change. I'm trying to lower her toe because letting her build heel height only causes flare.