Thanksgiving Ride

For those down in the States, this weekend was the Canadian Thanksgiving.  To celebrate, the Fiance and I usually go up north into the Northwest Territories to hike along the waterfalls and have a mini vacation.  Since we're saving money this year (have a wedding to pay for!) we stayed at home and did some day trips instead.  One of the quick trips we did was go hiking along the Rocky Lane trails by the indoor arena.  These trails are absolutely fantastic, non-motorized transport only, and are groomed for cross-country skiing in the winter.  There's an outdoor skating rink and a rentals shop for skis and skates which makes it a great place to go to have some winter fun!

Down the trail we go

Happy puppers!

This time we brought Shiloh with us to spend some time with our boys.  Now, we're not completely comfortable having Shiloh off leash yet, particularly on public trails so the Fiance was manning the camera and holding Shi who was running all about trying to mark everything, silly boy.  We went up and down some steep spots, but the footing held nicely

Slowly picking our way down this hill

Was holding mane for this one (is steeper than it appears)

We just wandered about for an hour checking out trails and I've now discovered some great spots for conditioning in the spring as long as the footing holds.  Even walking was good since the hills are fairly frequent!  Of course when we got there, Koda was acting like a complete ninny, calling for anyone and everyone but once we were under way he settled in.  Even when he trotted or cantered up those steep hills, he'd come back to me very easily once at the top. 

Great spot for conditioning

It was great going out with the boys, everyone seemed to have a lovely time on the trails.  Next time we may go out with either Shi or Koda since both together could be a recipe for disaster while Shi is gets overloaded with all the new smells and sounds.

Ever since the private lesson with Kathy Playdon, I've been slowly ramping my riding back up.  I think it's possible to ride at least 2 perhaps 3 times a week during the winter as long as we don't get too much snow at a time (the barn dosen't get plowed out until a few days later for some reason) and it doesn't stay cold for too long.  Talking to others who've lived up here for all their lives, the consensus seems like we may have a long autumn which I am extremely excited about.  If the white stuff can stay away until November, I'll be extremely happy!  We haven't started blanketing yet even though we've been getting below freezing temperatures over night.  I'm quite happy to let Koda fluff up as much as possible but he still keeps a fairly thin winter coat compared to the others.  Once we start blanketing, I think I'm going to play around with doing some minimal clipping with Koda.  I want to do a few more competitions this spring and summer (some dressage shows tossed in there) so will need to ride more throughout the winter than last...  Let's just hope nothing disastrous happens this year :)

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!