The Lucy factor

Yea, a post about Lucy!

 

So I have plans for this year, not goals.  Some of them may turn into goals, but for now they are plans.

I just realized on Saturday that Lucy is nine now. Its hard to believe that she is that old! She is such an amazing horse!

 

So our plans for this year:

• Ride at least once a week, possibly twice.
• One long ride a week (10 to 15 miles)
• Some work on driving at home (short sessions)
• As little trotting as she likes. I will not make her trot more then she wants to, but it will be my decision to walk not hers.
• We will not set out specific miles, times or paces before a ride, we will just ride the ride we feel like doing at the time.
• I will keep a very detailed log of our rides and study it as much as possible to make sure I am keeping her happy and not over working her.
• We will ride at home no more then two rides in a row.
• We will ride somewhere new at least once a month until there are no more close places to ride that we  have not been too.
• I will trailer her to my gate to ride rather then just walk from home as she doesn’t like that.
• I will take her to a ride in Spring and see how she likes it!
• We will have fun!

Well I think that is about it! I don’t know which ride yet I want to take her too. Loren really wants me to take her to one as soon as possible. Even though she is still in great shape it will take me until the end of the year to get her back into as good of shape as she was at the end of summer.

 

Its interesting because reading back through my blog posts, she was actually doing quite well. She did have her off days, but all in all she was doing really well. I think I just pushed her a little too far on that 20 mile ride (although I did learn that she is capable of doing that milage, and that was a tough ride!) and I rode her too much at home.

I need to make sure I don’t make any of the mistakes I made over the summer and do all the things that helped. I think keeping the milage at 8 to 10 miles was really good and will be a good time to up her speed, very slowly. Or I may not up her speed at all until after her first ride. I think she will be a lot faster at a ride and may start to want to pick of the speed after her first ride. It may be that I will not work her at very fast speeds at home but mostly do hill work, and let her pick her own pace at rides (which I think will be faster then at home).

 

We will see what happens.

 

I told Loren about twenty mule team, which he thinks I should do, but I am concerned that for her first ride its pretty far away. I would deffinatly stay as long as Mel is there, I think.

 

Hopefully I will get to ride this weekend (rain might be gone by Sunday!) and so I will get to see how well Lucy has retained her condition.