More heat More challanges

Temperature-86 degrees at 7 pm. That actually felt balmy with the slight breeze after yesterday.

Red Dawg wasn't too happy when he saw me with a halter in hand. But, I ignored him and took him out to the post and tied him...of course he gots some snacks.

It didn't take long to saddle up and go. He took off at a nice walk and I thought, this is going to be a nice ride. We circled down through the woods and past Gregs house and Ruths house then back up the lane towards Brookstone Road. That is a mile loop.

Then we headed right out of the driveway on the gravel road. Right now the road has very little gravel and I figured that Red could tolerate it with his bare feet.

Red had other ideas. He flat out refused to budge so I started turning him in circles trying to make him go right. It was hot now, no breeze. Cola and Gemma the Maremmas, flopped in the weeds and waited to see what would happen.

Finally I was able to encourage Red to move on out at the trot up the gravel road to the north.

He balked again when we came to some houses with dogs on both sides...after that he inched along, cautiously checking out every weed, bug, etc.

Aah finally we reached the gate to go through the corn fields. The edge of which has a pretty decent trail to trot on. Red was happy because he thought he was heading for home and we had a nice trot and canter going on.

Then we reached a gate that goes in to the big pasture. Red wanted to go left towards home, I wanted to go right and canter on the flat. Red totally refused to cross the creek today. It HAD dried up alot except that instead of water there was deep mud. So I let him slide and turned left.

Red took off at a canter and then suddenly was in a full blown gallop heading south west for home. BAD BAD BAD. It took me a bit to slow him down. Once again he tried to refuse to go West and I had to get after him. Finally we were going again, nice canter along the fence line for about half a mile.

Then the pond. Red wasn't interested in drinking, but did check out a frog or two. Gemma and Cola caught up and sunk in to the water to cool off.

Now we were headed north east towards home. The cows were all close here with the bull the closest. Hhhhhm, I pulled Red into a walk and stuck close to the fence line.

The Bull ignored us and watched the dogs. We passed safely and took off at a canter again along the fence line. I heard swishing and turned my head to look and saw that half of the cow/calf herd was racing after us....OHHHHHH lovely! But it was hot, Red was fast and the cows quit.

I circled around over the hill and cantered Red up and down and around it 3 times to make up for his balking earlier. He was soaked with sweat now so we headed at a trot towards the "woods" gate. Then I heard barking and figured that the cows werent letting the dogs get through.

I hollered for the dogs, but they didnt come in to sight. It was getting dark and I still had to go through the dark woods to get home....so home I headed. No more refusals from Red and we ended up doing 5 miles in 50 min.

Red was happy to get hosed down and the dogs did find a hole in the fenceline somewhere and came trucking on home 30 min later.