By the numbers

As I mentioned before, I've been keeping a journal of all my rides. It has been very eye opening. When I flip back through, I really get a good sense of lameness issues, training issues, weather issues, etc.

In particular, I decided to do a run through of the numbers:

Walker has been worked 24 days between February 12th and April 5th. That's 24 days out of 52 days total, which is 46%.

Of those 24 days, only 15 of them were rides. That's 29% of the 52 days and 63% of all the days I worked him.

Although I don't keep track of snow days and days where I have to work late, by checking out the days I normally go and days where I didn't, I estimate that I missed about 15 days because of snow, work, sickness or lameness. Once again, that's 29% of the 52 days.

I have also missed 7 perfectly good Fridays (13% of the 52 days) for no apparent reason other than I was lazy and I can't seem to drag my butt out to the barn on Fridays.

Because of dog day on Thursdays, I missed every Thursday (8 days, 15%).

In my mind, those are some pretty deflating numbers. I console myself only with the knowledge that we were hit with an almost weekly snowstorm, Thursdays are out of my control, and so is sickness and lameness.

But as we approach the nicer weather, I hope that those numbers will get a little better as we prepare for whatever purpose we're going to have this summer. I'll keep you posted.