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.

Spring is definitely here. People and ponies alike are restless and antsy, and can’t get out on trail fast enough. Both ponies were full of beans yesterday. Beamer looks like he got into a fight with a chainsaw — and lost — from his over-the-fence face games with the other geldings. Mimi is going around with a permanent “pony glint” in her eyes, just waiting to see what kind of mischief she can come up with, be it chomping Beamer on the tail, sneezing all over me, or flipping her feed pan around.

They were both pretty full of themselves over the weekend, and as such, we rode fairly slowly both days. It wouldn’t have taken much encouragement for a working trot to turn into a hand gallop, and Beamer had his competitive “race brain” trying to take over. Hand-walking for a bit dissuaded him. And Mimi has embrace her springtime “3 weeks in, 1 week out” heat cycle. Someone remind me of this next time I fall in love with a feisty, opinionated, sometimes flat-out bitchy mare.

And the horsepeople are obviously feeling it, too. The parking lot was crammed with trailers yesterday, and from the sounds of it, a riotous good time was being had by all. Why do people feel the need to consume beer at 8:00 in the morning, just before you’re about to climb on a horse? And the various and sundry horse-related email lists I’m on are obviously feeling the need to get out and gallop for 10 miles or so. Sniping and ruffled feathers abound.

We took the ponies out yesterday and they were great. Their first ride since McDowell last weekend, and I was so pleased with how they looked. They were both very happy and perky, and had tons of energy. It was very gratifying to see both of them go charging out of their stalls and jump into the trailer. :)

It was a shorter ride, only about 7-8 miles, a nice moderate mix of walking and trotting. They keep making “improvements” to the San Tan trails, and I’ve mixed feelings about this. The endurance rider in me is thrilled — smoother trails mean more trotting; the inner trail rider in me is screaming about the lack of challenge and technical trails. However, I think I’ve come to a happy compromise: we spend most of our time at the San Tans training for endurance. It’s easier to have that, and trailer out father to more challenging trails when we want to trail ride, versus trying to endurance train on really tough, technical trails all the time.

The weather was absolutely perfect yesterday, too. High 60s, moderately breezy, a few scattered clouds, and just this light, fresh feeling in the air that spring is definitely on its way.

I really don’t understand Mimi and her lack of drinking at rides. Yesterday, for a short little ride like that, she drained her entire 5-gallon bucket, between drinking before we went out and drinking when we got back. And she does this on a regular basis for training rides. And yet, she goes all night Friday night at McDowell without drinking. ???

I’m going to try Karen Chaton’s suggestion of two buckets of water, one plain and one salty. I offered her a small bucket of salted water yesterday after the ride and she was quite intrigued, enough so that she drained most of the bucket. Odd pony.

Dad and I rode with Jim and Cindy down at Bulldog Canyon near the Salt River yesterday. We had an absolutely fantastic ride, and if I had to sum it up in one sentence, it would be, “The Go Pony is back!” Whatever was ailing her last fall is done and over with, because she was strong and forward the entire day, easily keeping up with the bigger horses.

We met and Jim and Cindy’s and trailered up together. The trailhead is the only icky part of the trail, a small pullout right off the side of Bush Highway, which is a 2-lane highway that leads to the Salt River and Saguaro Lake. It’s exceptionally busy in the summer, when the river is clogged to the brim with people wanting to going tubing. In the middle of winter, it’s not as bad – at least there’s no shuttle buses. In the morning, traffic is pretty light. We had already put their Renegades on back at the barn and groomed them, so we just had to saddle up, and we were ready.

The trail starts out on some rocky single track that leads down into a really nice wash. We followed the wash for a while, then came out on a wider, more firmly packed double-track road, which was perfect for trotting. We came across a really large mud puddle across the trail – about 30 feet in diameter total, and knee-deep on Mimi. Mimi, of course, had to stop in the middle of the puddle and drink, drink, drink for about five minutes. That’s my good endurance pony. Her drinking habits, especially how early on in a ride she’s willing to drink, always impresses people.

Unfortunately, after slogging through the puddle, one of her front Renegade flipped off about five minutes down the trail. :( This is only the third time I’ve ever had a Renegade come off, and one of the other times was after crossing water. I think that there was some sand in them, and when it got wet, created sufficient weight to flip the boot off. That, and my Velcro straps are rather old – they’re still on there from Man Against Horse back in October, and they got rained on/ muddied up there. A bit of a pain when I had to jump off and retrive it, but considering I’ve been using Renegades for a year and a half now, and this is only the third one I’ve ever had come off, I think that’s doing really well. Especially when you consider that I once lost Easyboots six times during one 20 mile NATRC ride. And those were glued on.

Me retrieving my boot gave our group a good excuse to split up – Jim’s horse Panama only likes limited company, and Jim wanted to ride a lot harder, faster, and farther than the rest of us, so he continued on while Dad, Cindy, and I went back down the road towards the river. We did some more good trotting where the footing was good and the road hadn’t been too eaten up by ATV’s – a lot of the roads around there are for off-road use, and they really chew them up. Lots of up-n-down moguls, which is where Mimi lost her boot – she sort of misstepped, trying to balance through the mogul, and I think she must have trod on the side of the boot.

Eventually the road wound down to a large sandwash that we followed along the most spectacular cliffs overhead. I wish I would have gotten more pictures at this point, but I had three hands full of very energetic pony. Dad and Cindy had been taking turns leading, and Dad was in the lead at this point. Beamer rediscovered his “big trot,” most recently awoken at Land of the Sun (yeah, still working on that ride story) and again put in to use here. We followed the sand wash all the way down to the river, taking several intermittent breaks for a few minutes of walking to give them a breather.

The river is amazing. Normally, the Salt River runs at about eight cubic feet per second. Due to all of our recent rain, and the fact that the lakes were so full, they released some water a couple weeks ago into the river, and it was now running 2200 cf/s!!! The edge of the river was a good 20 feet higher up on the bank than normal.

While we were watering the horses, Mimi had her first encounter with kayaks! She wasn’t quite sure what to think. At first, she was very spooked. Fortunately, I was off her at the time, standing next to her while she was drinking. She did her best Arab impression, with ears pricked, eyes bugged, nostrils flared, poised on her tiptoes to whirl around at second’s notice. But then, when the strange floating thing started talking to her, she got curious. “What’s a person doing floating on a large skewer in the middle of the river?” I imagined she was saying.

Eventually, she took a breath and decided they weren’t going to have her for lunch. Fortunate, since another two of them pulled up to the bank about that time.

After watering at the river, we were only about two miles from the trailer, and Mimi and I lead the way home. There was a lot of up-and-down, so we just walked them in, but she had her pony power walk going, and was probably walking at least 4.5 mph. Beamer and Cindy’s horse Harley had to really move to keep up.

The pictures don’t do the mountians nearly the justice they deserve. The Superstition and Goldfield ranges are truly spectacular mountains that can’t be properly captured on film.

Overall, we probably did about 15 miles, or slightly over, in about 3 hours, including our water break. Oh, and why “The Dirty Grey Horse Ride?” Because Mimi, Beamer, and Panama are all grey, and they all could qualify to be registered as pintos right now. If the pinto registry took “manure, mud, urine, and grass” as acceptable registry colors. :)

Today, Dad and I rode at the San Tans. We did our big 12-mile loop, a mix of walking and trotting. Dad tried the S-Hack on Beamer today (I finished rigging up my backup one to fit Beamer) and he did even better than the first time. He’s definitely a hack horse, and Dad’s going to try it at the second half of the ride at McDowell. Beamer still needs his “security blanket” snaffle at the start of the ride, where a bit more precision control, and a nice ability to one-rein stop is vital, but we figure once he settles down after the first few miles, he’d be perfect.

This weekend solidified the decision in my mind: we are going to try a 50 again. We’re planning to go to the Valley of the Sun ride in McDowell Mountain Park at the end of the month. I figured if Mimi came out of this weekend – two back-to-back rides, one that was a lot of deep sand and a lot of trotting, and the other more hills and a mix of pace – and was still doing well, I was going to try the 50. She was still bright-eyed and bouncing at the end of today’s ride – even spooking at the construction cones at the trailhead, which she has passed at least a dozen times in the last month. :)