Yup, spring is here. Mimi zoomed her way through our mostly-walking ride today. I wish my GPS wasn’t on the blink, because I would have loved to have been able to track her speed. Dad thought at one point, she was walking out about 5mph.

The best thing was, today she felt the smoothest she’s been in about four or five years. Her walk has changed from the “slam the toes down first” pony march to a heel-first-landing, gliding walk. We walked most of the 10 miles we did today, and my knees weren’t crunchy from trying to shock-absorb.

My conclusion? The hocks are fused, and she’s once again balanced and moving out evenly.

I’m sure it also helps her energy levels in that it’s spring, and she really likes springtime. Ah, raging mare hormones. She was very talkative today, including sneaking up behind Dad and Beamer and letting out an infamous, eardrum-shattering pony screech-whinny. I’m not sure who jumped more — Dad or Beamer. I almost fell off from laughing so hard. She had a very smug look on her face, so I know it was intentional. For being the smallest horse at the barn, she sure is the loudest! No wonder she has good P&Rs…talk about lung capacity!

The funniest moment of the day was when Dad needed to adjust something with his saddle pad and used Mimi as a saddle rack, placing his saddle on top of mine. She was not amused. She stood there with this pouty scowl on her face, glaring at Dad the entire time he was fixing his pad. Why the pony saddle rack? Because we have all sorts of drying-out, nasty weeds right now, and Dad didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening picking dead weeds out of the fleece underside of his saddle.