Endurance training ride take 2

After the awful weather last night, I thought that we were in for a nasty day, but this morning was lovely and sunny, though there was a very chilly wind, so off we toddled to Abington again this morning for our second endurance training ride.

Paddy was more chilled this time and behaved himself in the first vetting. His heart rate was 32 bpm (had to poke him to make sure he was actually alive!). Once this was done we tacked up & off we went. We managed to trot & canter all along the Roman Road going out, but had to walk on the road and through Chilford Hall which slowed us down a lot. Once we were back on the Roman road we again managed to canter & trot all the way back with a fairly short walk right at the end to get the heart rate down. At the final vetting his heart rate was 40bpm and we managed 8km per hour, which is the lower limit allowable in the riding club competitive rides.

We need to be able to increase our speed, but as our horses are barefoot and paddy is just coming back into ridden work after having 15 months off for lameness and kissing spines, we can't trot on Tarmac just yet and they find stony tracks really tough. Hopefully the competitive rides won't have so much of these!!

Paddy behaved himself for the most part - he was still spooky and nappy at times but a lot better than last Sunday, though he did take great offence at the stone horse eating lion statues on the driveway to Chilford hall!!

I was thrilled with how he went today.....onwards & upwards!!!