The Three Hour Tour*

*Except rather than a nice desert island, Bridget finds herself back at the boarding barn she hated so much from our last clinic outing :)

As the title would indicate, rather than trailering in for our clinic, I opted to ride in the day ahead and enjoy the sunshine. I was expecting about a 2-2.5 hour ride, based on walking most of the 13km/8mile distance. The ground is good in places, but the majority is pretty rocky for a barefoot horse so walking is best. Not to mention Midge has a big day tomorrow so we don't need to tire her out! I heard a rumor the other riders in my group want to mostly work on problems at the canter, so Midge will have her work cut out for her if she wants to keep up with the big horses!

Lots of miles along this hydro easement

A lake

So many huge puddles along here- come riding with me if your horse has an issue with water :)

I ended up running into a few other riders on the trail who were headed to the same general area I was, so had the unexpected treat of some company. Can I just say one more time how lucky I am to have Bridget? Three other horses she's never met, two dogs tagging along, and she was totally chill with the whole thing. We rode with them for a couple of hours. They were very slow, hence the reason my ride ended up closer to 3 hours - but we were in no rush and company is always a treat! When they opted for the loop home and Bridget had to continue on her own I half expected some dramatics, but there was nothing...she was perfectly content to continue on solo even though we were far away from home on a 'strange' trail.

Finally some softer ground

She rolled into her weekend home happy and fresh, barely sweating at all and no worse for wear. She settled in without a peep, so hopefully that's a sign of how she'll be all weekend. Since we are sans Ginger and her drama this time, I'm hoping Bridget won't worry as much about her missing friends as she did at the last clinic.

Sneaking up through a clear cut to hook onto a logging road

I'm looking forward to my ride tomorrow! I kind of like our cowboy clinician - he's growing on me and is the polar opposite of the dressage lady we had last time. He's super encouraging and positive and has a 'get it done the best you/your horse can' attitude. His resume includes stunt riding and training horses for/in the movies and TV, as well as some rodeo stuff and a whole lot of starting baby horses. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's going to be a bit different than out last clinic lol

Finally, follow this road down to the city limits and our temporary accommodations