EC Day #8

A little about the Barn you ride at:

The barn I ride at in the winter is conveniently right down the road from my house.  I could easily ride there from my house and not even have a tired horse.  Although in the winter, which is pretty much the only time I have used this barn, I do load up and drive.

It belongs to a very nice guy named Sam.  He boards some horses there so it isn't very often that there isn't at least one person riding.   It is a decent sized arena, with various different training tools for various types of disciplines of riding.  I won't venture to guess the dimensions.

There is a bridge to cross for trail training.  He has poles and small jumps, he has tarps hanging all over, he has ropes, he has rain slickers, and even some barrels.  Although I think that you could not actually run those barrels, but you could walk or trot if you were just trying to teach the pattern.  There just isn't enough room for going really fast.

The dirt is a fabulous mixture of sand, dirt and some very very fine gravel. It is soft but not too soft. Deep but not too deep. 

There is an huge pack of horse eating kitties. They look harmless enough to me, but according to Trax, they are highly dangerous and lurk in the shadows just waiting to jump out and eat a poor unsuspecting horse alive.  He also says that he over heard them saying that they consider paint horses to be the best to eat.

Now, here is the really interesting part. (to me anyways)  I just found out last August that Sam also has an outdoor arena.  Last summer I was driving much further to use some different outdoor places to ride, and these places were not well cared for. So now if and when it ever warms up here, I know that I can just run right down there to finish Trax's ranch horse education.

So that is where I ride.