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.