My friend Linda was available to ride today so we decided to go riding over on the Lorax trails in Pittston. I wanted to get in a decent ride to see if my Easyboots will work and stay on Luke. I only have two that will fit his front feet but that's a start. I don't have any small enough for his back feet.
I got up a bit later then I planned so I had to scurry around to get ready. We had planned to meet at 9:00 am over at the Exit 43 truck stop and would trailer pool from there. I knew I wasn't going to make it quite at 9:00 am and sent a text message to Linda. Turned out she was running a little late also. I quickly groomed Luke and put on the Easyboots. I don't know why they call them Easyboots..... there is nothing easy about putting them on...... but I managed. And I managed to get to the truck stop by 9:15 am. Linda was just a few minutes ahead of me getting there. I put my stuff in her truck, loaded Luke up into her trailer and off we went.
It didn't take long to unload Luke and Gus and get them tacked up once we were at Lorax. We sprayed them both down good as the Lorax trails seem to be tick haven! We started out walking to warm them up. when we passed Ann's house, she was outside and we stopped to chat with her for a few minutes. Both Gus and Luke took full advantage of this to trim the grass at the end of Ann's driveway for her. Such thoughtful boys. When we continued, we walked just a little more then we picked up the pace and did quite a bit of trotting and some cantering. I needed to know if the boots would stay on at all paces. The boots stayed on very well. After going around the trails a few times, we had time and decided to make more of an adventure of it. We rode up the trail that come out on the Warren Rd. and took a side trail to the left. We had noticed this trail on a previous ride and wanted to see where it went. We were hoping it would come out on a camp road down by the lake. The first trail we took was a dead end. but, we found another and tried that. The trail was quite rough. There was a bit of water and mud but nothing to bad. We had to make our way around multiple blown down trees and a few times we lost the trail and then picked it back up. We came down to the lake so knew we were going in the right direction. Then the trail took us away from the lake up a hill. This was not the direction we wanted to go but we didn't see any other way to go. After a little bit, we came to an intersection just as we though we were losing the trail again and we headed back down towards the lake. Just when we lost sight of any signs of a trail again Linda spotted a house through the trees. So, we bush whacked the last few feet out onto the camp road. Luke and Gus are such good sports about this kind of stuff. We rode up the camp road which is a nice long uphill climb. Then we went down the Warren Rd and back to the trail that goes back to the Lorax trails. Luke's boots were still on his feet! One of the cable clamps had come undone but the boot was on and looked to be snug so I left it alone.
Once back on the Lorax trails, we did a bit more trotting on the way back to the trailer. At this point we suddenly were swarmed by very big horse flies as well as a few deer fly. So, we untacked and got them into the trailer as quickly as we could. Both boys were very good today and it was a lovely ride. We made the swap back to my trailer at the truck stop, filled up with gas and then home. Luke is so good when we do "musical trailers" He just loads in and out and in and out with no fuss. He's quiet about leaving whoever his buddy for the day is. Well, he's just such a good boy.
No comments:
Post a Comment