Trail Ride

I had not taken Lily out on trail ride in several months. It has been one of those “ought to’s” in the back of my mind, but there has just been too much going on. I usually trail ride with my trainer and she has been too busy with her summer camp.

However, she takes Wednesday as her day off, and asked me if I wanted to go out. Lily had been a little too enthusiastic on Tuesday, since I hadn’t been riding her enough last week due to the heat, but had chilled out again today, so I agreed to a 20 minute trail ride and worked for a while in the arena while my trainer got Havoc ready. Havoc is her 22 year old Thoroughbred and former show hunter. He looks like an old dude horse on the trail most of the time these days, except when he doesn’t. My trainer would probably let me trail ride Havoc if I asked her, but I haven’t ever quite gotten up the nerve to do so. I’ve seen Havoc forget his age and do airs above the ground too many times over the past decade. If I want to trail ride a Thoroughbred, I’ve got Hap.
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Dogs

I can’t believe that between the time we moved to Texas in June 1990 to the time we moved to Colorado in November 1992, we acquired five dogs. We had been without a dog for many years, and we sort of went overboard when we finally had the space. We had gone back down to zero for a month before we acquired Dudley, our Rottweiler cross, and Lody, our smooth Collie a few months later. Somewhere in the course of five dogs, we had decided two dogs were quite enough.

I have been remembering what it was like to have a large pack because we do again, temporarily. My sister-in-law is traveling, and her regular dog sitter had other plans, so Lily and Lightning are staying with usfor ten days.
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Riding Hap

In a post last week, I wrote about riding Hap bareback. Here is a photo my trainer took of us today while we trotted around her in a circle:

bareback.jpg

I would like to be a little more erect and have my leg dropped down straighter out of the hip, but I love how relaxed and round Hap looks in this photo.

TypePad

For those who have been curious about the TypePad beta, the TypePad weblog will be describing some of the features this week:

Starting today, we’ll begin presenting some in-depth information about TypePad, including detailed descriptions of major features, additional screenshots and a number of ideas that inspired our development of the service. We’ll conclude this week with a full feature list, pricing chart and information about TypePad’s upcoming launch.

HTTrack Website Copier

HTTrack Website Copier is an open source website mirroring utility. I am using it to mirror my typepad site locally on my PC. With the weblog software I developed myself, I keep a local copy of my writings on my PC, and use my website host as the mirror. I dislike not having a local copy of anything that I write, and HTTrack allows me to create a local, browsable copy of my weblog.

One feature that I like about HTTrack is that it allows me to write a batch script to control the download, but also has a GUI front end available.

Farmer’s Market

I had to run an errand this morning in downtown Colorado Springs, and just happened to pass by the Farmers Market held in Monument Park on Thursday mornings. Once my errand was complete, I stopped by and picked up tomatoes, green beans, and corn. Since I bought too much for me and Jack to eat in a few days, I gave some of each to my trainer. I have to restrain myself at Farmers’ Markets, because I can end up with more produce than we can eat, even with my trainer’s assistance. It all looks so good.

I won’t eat tomatoes most of the year, but in season I like them when they are home grown or from a farmers market. I had one tonight with a quick quesadilla, and it was a B plus. (Non seasonal ones from the supermarket are usually a D minus.) I am looking forward to the green beans. I don’t like frozen green beans very much, but I have discovered that fresh ones cooked in the steamer are quite acceptable.

It was too hot to ride this afternoon: I already felt drained by running errands in the heat. Even with the air conditioning in the car I was tired. Instead, I brought Lily and Hap into the barn, groomed them, did a little ground based clicker training with them, and applied fresh fly spray. It was 88F in the barn, which means it was much hotter outside in the sun.