I rode tuesday morning.

Took the hardheaded white dog and the OCD/ADD striped dog. Mia the hardhead had to be herded to stay out of a driveway. I've had various visions of ideal rides, herding cattle on my own ranch as I was growing up, endurance or trail rides in scenic vistas more now --herding dogs through semi-rural suburbia has never been a dream. I DO like that Shade will do this for me and its still saddle time and keeps me sane, but its not THIS IS WHY I HAVE HORSES riding.

Tuesday night it snowed hard, driving home from work was a bear, and I was really glad that Sergey urged/reminded me to head home early, there was some SLOW traffic getting out of Boulder, but the empty roads were so crappy I was only going 1/2 speed or less too and I don't think the snow plows got to the roads until early morning on wednesday. So yesterdays morning exercise was just tromping thru snow to feed and some arm workout getting some snow off of trees with the longing whip. It worked fairly well to get high up in the tree and dislodge some snow but my forearms were killing me. Dad went out with the big garage broom and got more snow off the fir trees by the house. The cottonwoods and russian olives were budding and had some extra snow but not horrible and it was warming up and the snow falling off by 11 am. It was pretty nice yesterday afternoon, I took a quick walk from work. Its not quite a serious workout groove, but I have gotten to where I really want that afternoon walk to clear my head after sitting at the cpu monitor.

Today I drove the dogs to my park and walk spot. Mia did not go very far, but I jogged most of the way back to the car so felt good about getting blood circulating at least. Ole was playing with his abandoned irrigation pipe in the CRP, I guess after I made him leave the visiting cat in the hay this morning he really needed to fixate on something. I went home, grained the horses and he was finally heading back home when I drove back. I think its good I never had kids, the amount of interaction the dogs demand drives me crazy some days. Horses are happy to be with the herd on days I don't have time to mess with them.