Nice, quiet evening with my Summer and getting ready for the DTC.

Well, since the darkness comes at 6pm now, not much riding gets done during the week. I could ride around the barnyard, but I love the trails better. And with the early darkness, I get a little lazy and just want to go home and veg with my family. So...instead of riding or vegging with the family, I ground work Summer in our lit round pen. Doing some exertions of speed to help with her wind. As that is what we do in the sorting pens when we are hauling butt after a calf. She pants worse than most of the stock horses and it seems it takes her longer to stop panting. So, we need to work on that at home. Once we are done in the round pen she goes on the hot walker to cool down. While she is doing that, I am cleaning her pen and feeding all the ponies on "pony row". That is where Summer, Amira and Gypsy live as there are more ponies on the lane than there are regular sized horses.

After I put Summer back in her pen, she got a nice grooming. The full treatment. A brushing with all three different brushes, hard, medium and soft. Then a mane and tail brushing. A face brushing. Hooves picked. And a spraying with Mosquito Halt. She didn't know what to think that I didn't saddle her up for a ride after that grooming. I need to do that every night. I did that with Fawtal and we had a much closer bond than Summer and I do. Summer and I are a good team (or so I'm told), but we are not close like Fawtal and I were. Maybe it is a gender thing as he was a gelding and she is a mare. Who knows. But I do know that grooming is good bonding time with your horse, so I will be doing it much more often and without expecting her to work afterwards every time.

Last night after our routine that I have started as stated above. I got my cart out that I am taking to the Driven Trail Challenge this weekend and washed it. Tonight it gets a new coat of paint so by Friday it will be good and dry for me to load into my SUV.

I think this might be the one big thing I am getting tired of the most about doing any type of competitive trail anything. The packing of the truck and trailer, and the trying to not forget anything. That is the most time consuming and racking of the brain thing that there is. Meaning, probably more stressful than the actual competition its self! LOL At least for me.

But this weekend will be fun. Seeing folks I haven't seen for months and trying something new and praying that it works so we can have more of them.