Up and down and up and down and....

Today was a different kind of ride.  I went out with Dottie and Sky.  Our goal was to go to Dottie"s Hill (which I found out has the name Vinnie's Hill-seems like every rider names it after their horse) and trot up it without a horse charging out of control up the hill.  The last few times the horses have had speed issues going up the hill.
We went straight there.  On the way we came across someone running a chainsaw on the old trotting trail.  Hopefully someone is clearing it.  They could not see us coming and we could not see them - and I wasn't sure if they were falling a tree or cutting up something that had already fallen.  So just in case something was going to go crashing down we got off and walked past the sawing.  The horses did fine.  The sawing never stopped, we got back on.
At the hill we decided to put Zoe in front seeing she is the slower of the two.  The hill basically has 3 levels.  We walked up the first 2 and were doing fine so I asked for a trot up the last 3rd and everyone did fine.  We walked all the way back down.  We walked up 1/3 of it and trotted 2/3 and did fine.  We walked back down.  We took a few walking steps and trotted up the whole thing...and the horses did fine.  We rested for a bit, then...we walked back down, changed the horse in the lead to Sky took a few walking steps and nicely trotted up the whole thing.  We decided that was enough for the day.  No need to keep at it...a horse might say "enough" and do something naughty.  Then we would feel like we would have to correct that and we would be at it longer and it might not turn out so well.  Finishing on a good note seemed like a good idea.  Each time we walked down the hill, Zoe would question me by flicking an ear in the go home direction.  She didn't balk or refuse to go...which is a good thing.  She probably sighed inside and said do we really have to do this?  Maybe yesterday's ride helped because we did many direction changes that lead away from home.
We figured they worked hard for us and we walked home.  It was a nice ride.  Such nice weather for January.