In which the rain (temporarily) subsides, and we play ketchup games

The ground was still soggy, but Dory and I went riding yesterday anyhow. 

Dory and Spot, Me and Fiddle.  Nice ears, everybody?

We ride on armored logging roads in winter, so the mud isn't a problem, but the epic rain from earlier in the week is still evident--there were several stretches of road that are still under a few inches of water.  Lower-lying parts of the county are flooded, but the creek in my yard drained away within 24 hours.  Whew.

Up the hill.  The new camera doesn't "grey-out" the sky like the old camera;
in this instance, that shade of grey really is the color of the sky.

 Fiddle prefers to follow, but we did take the lead up a big hill.  She likes Spot (as much as she likes anything) but she didn't mind leaving Spot at the bottom of the hill and trotting away.  It is marvelous to have a horse who isn't herd-bound, even if that means she's a nasty dragon instead.

Dory and Spot

 Fiddle did try to kick Spot once, but Spotty is a clever, clever horse.  She was watching, and dove for the ditch, handily dodging my bad mare's badness.  Bad Mare got soundly reprimanded, and then went back to work--no rest for the wicked, sez me!

Fiddle's ears are paying attention to me and the noise from the new camera.
She's doesn't actually have "Bad Ears" in this picture--
Bad Ears look much, much nastier!

 Mostly, though, Spot and Dory set a quick enough pace that Fee doesn't have time to be wicked.  We traveled 9.5 miles in about 90 minutes.  Most of the time we were trotting; we walked for about 20 minutes of the ride (while warming up and cooling down) and we were stopped about 10 minutes, mostly when we met up with our friends

L-to-R: Mojo, Marilyn, Zippy, Rhonda, and Slinky

 Marilyn and Rhonda, and stopped to take pictures of each other!   Spot's moving-out trot averages about 10mph, even up hills.That's a comfortable pace for Fiddle, but a tad quicker than we usually travel with our other riding group, so once we got the Wickedness under control, she put her head down and trotted forward nicely. 

It was a good ride.

Ketchup:



Back at home, I took some photos of how the farm is doing during the Seasonal Deluge (it's started raining buckets again) so y'all could see how glorious it is to have a real barn with a real roof!

Barn aisle, nice and dry


Oh, yes. The mud outside is truly frightful

 mud in the paddock--next summer, we will add a LOT of gravel!

 

but inside Fiddle's stall (and Hana's too), it's dry and delightful.

When the rain slowed some this afternoon, I took the floofs out for a walk to test out a cool new thing that American Trail Gear made for me:

I call it a "Floofer-Walker."

Instead of juggling and continually detangling three biothane leashes for three floofs with vastly different levels  of fitness, the Floofer-Walker lets me hold onto ONE leash that is connected to all three dogs.  When Luna (the least fit) starts to lag behind, she is pulled along--not by me, but by the other floofs.  When Mimsy (the most fit) starts to jet off in some unexpected direction, she is anchored by the other dogs.  It works!

Now, it's time to get back to writing again. 

I finished the first draft of the Endurance 101 book, thanks to some awesome feedback from Funder; now, the publisher is pondering whether or not to accept it.  Cross fingers! 

Meantime, I'm writing the book for the other blog, which already has a book contract.  My co-author for that book lives in India, so we spend a lot of time emailing drafts back-and-forth.  We're on Chapter 9 for that book, and about to throw ourselves down the gullet of Chapter 10.  And on we go!