More training

Well, now that I have decided that Santana can be a good CTR horse, I am having to REALLY take training seriously. Lucky for me, I have Sherrie Bray to terrorize, er, help me with this.
Sunday we went to Bulldog to ride. Good place to train, because ther is lots of sand, hills and the river. Seeing as Santana is still not sure about water since I tried to drown him in a river crossing last year, water is good. And, it is not super easy to come by when you live in the desert.
I have ridden off the Blue Point trail head many times. But, as usual, I have never ridden it Sherrie's way. This woman knows more trails in any given area than anybody I know. So, off we went. We had ridden from here before, but, not like this. We started out riding on a single track along the fenceline headed west. Then we hit wash. Lots of wash. We rode what seemed to be 10 miles of wash at a gait. (ok, it was really probably less than two miles...) then Sherrie spies this single track to the west and says, "Oh, this is Kick A$$ trail. Lets go." Um, Ok. WEll, it should be called Butt Pucker trail. There were just a few spots of steep slick rock that I thought," I might die today." But, Santana followed Pharaoh up, and my boy did just fine. I really need to learn to breathe more. I am getting better about this, mostly because Sherrie is always with me, TELLING me, "Breathe." WEll, what goes up, must go down. So, down the hill we went. I was quite happy to get back to the wash. And LOTS of wash there was. At one point, my normally spook proof horse, did what I think was a spook. Two riders came flying up from behind us at a gallup, and we never heard them until after they were past. Santana spun around to see what was about to eat him, but, he was fine as soon as he could see what it was.....They were an annoyance.
Finally, we got to the river, and it was quite high and had good current at he first beach. Santana went right in, which made me very happy. I think he is almost over his fear of water from his near death experience last year. We played there for a few minutes, and then went several yards upstream to a very calm water beach. We practiced backing in and out of the water. The cool water must have felt really good on the horses legs, after all that gaiting in deep sand, on a pretty warm March day. It was a short ride then back to the trailer. the entire ride was only about 10 miles, although it felt much longer. Sherrie is going to make a contender out of me. Or kill me in the process. I love her.