Training

Thurs. 8/5 Off. Based on Rod's enthusiastic walk to his early morning feed--probably whatever slight inj. there was has healed.

Wed. 8/4: The perils of exercising day after fast work and also increasing distance or speed too quickly rear their head this day. Note to myself--never work after a fast day! Interesting sequence: Here's how it went: 1. Tack work: horse tacked, then trotted twice up and down the hill and noticed horse looking skyward even more than usual. Without considering a possible reason I instinctively abandoned further trot and just walked the horse. Had visitors and talking to them doing this. 15 min on horse total.

Moved horse into the paddock for riderless slow gallop notably after yesterday's fast work. Noticed during warm up trot--horse is full striding but I see an occasional almost imperceptible hitch in the stride. 2 or 3 of these over the course of 1/2 mile trot put me on guard, and suddenly the excessive sky watching under tack clicks in my brain--abnormal trot under tack, occasional hitch in stride--he has either bruised front hoof or pulled shoulder muscle. Called work at that point and decided on 24 hrs. rest.

Tues. 8/3 Scheduled fast day that failed went poorly, and then bad to worse, see 8/4

Sat.'s 2 x 1 mile riderless at speed was to be followed up by the same work but faster. Even before starting I was worrying how quickly I'd moved these horses to mile heats. We'd lost a lot of work in July due to rain, and all prior speed work had been limited to 1/2 mile before this latest series. Should we scale this back a little, was the thought. This proved to be a correct thought, see 8/4. Here is what we did--

Planned: 2 x 1 mile riderless in :13s

Result: 2 x 1 mile riderless oscillating between :14s and 15s. Various factors, lack of enthusiasm etc., caused them to go slower than planned, turned out to be a good thing, see 8/4.

Mon. 8/2: riderless slow gallop for 2 miles. Had company/ scotched tack work.

Sun. 8/1: Off