lovely winter ride

I finally got out for a ride today. It's been cold and it was today. But with not too much wind and lots of sun it turned out to be a very nice riding day. My friend Rocky came over to ride with me. She is a good rider so I gave her the choice of who she wanted to ride. She chose Louie as she's never ridden a mule before. We caught Louie and Marie, brought them out front and tied them to the trailer. While we were grooming them, Louie was being a bit restless and not standing quiet for Rocky to groom him. He's not normally cinchy at all but he jumped when Rocky tighted the girth so I finished tacking him up for her. Once Rocky mounted up, Louie was fine. We started out through the woods from my house. That was fine. The snow was deeper then I expected but not crusty so Marie and Louie were getting though it with no trouble. Then we came to the trails where my parents had been snowshoeing. That was not good going. The snow was packed but would not hold the equines weight so they would punch through every few steps. So, we decided to head out of the woods and out to the road. While riding the road isn't exciting, in good company, it is still fun. We did a little bit of trotting and a lot of walking and TONS of talking. Louie was very good. Even when a big oil truck went by, he didn't mind. Though he did get a bit concerned a couple times over a blowing leaf. LOL. Rocky enjoyed him and enjoyed his smooth gaits. On the way home, neither horse or mule wanted to go by my neighbors llama. He was sputtering and grunting and rearing and ramming his fence..... I didn't want to go by him either! I finally got Marie to go and Louie followed with no more then some hurried steps. I was very pleased with my boy. He acted like the little 5 year old that he is at first but once he was mounted, he was a very good boy.