Hacking out and conditioning

It's been so hot, so I decided to get back out around the back hay field again with Clover and did 3 miles of trot sets, capped by a strong (375 mpm) canter across the back of the field. She was soooo good, and the air was much cooler in the field.

We'd also gone out the night before, which was also hot, and hacked around the winery corn fields. There were new crow deterrents in place: colorful, round mylar balloons with streamers set on posts just taller than an average human and placed every 20 feet or so around each patch. Clover looked at them with surprise, so I moved her slowly to the one closest to us as we entered the field and let her get up close to touch it. I heard bird calls deeper in the field and thought that the balloons weren't doing the job.

Each one we passed elicited a bit of surprise, but she was fine, even when we got to the back of the field where we discovered a post-mounted speaker playing rackety screeches. Ohh, so that's the source of the bird calls! Clover did a horse-y double take at it, but realizing it wasn't a threat, ignored it and we continued on. Up and around the newer grape arbor, through the short wooded loop by the river, where it was even cooler and we scared a couple of wood ducks into flight, and slowly wended our way back to the farm.