Saw an actual robin yesterday while doing some snow removal in the driveway. Not that a robin is totally unheard of up here in the wintertime, but it did seem a little bit out of context.

I took it as a sign, and decided to open spring training a little early. I ended up taking Spike out for a 90-minute run. I hadn’t done anything much over an hour since last fall, so I was pleasantly surprised to feel pretty good for this first longer workout.

Spike did pull a new trick on me, however. There’s a cattle guard on Brush Hollow Road that has a three-way gate. Essentially there are two wire gates that hitch to one post where three pastures meet at the road.

I had opened them and put Spike through on a long lead, and was wrestling with the hasp on the last gate. That’s when I noticed Spike eyeing the cattle guard and thought “Oh $%#@.’”

At this point I realized all I could do was stay stlll, watch, and hope for the best.

And what I watched Spike do was simply an amazing lesson in just how sure-footed donkeys can be. He walked right over that cattle guard, placing his feet, both the fronts and backs, directly on the metal rails. There was no misstep, no slip-up. He simply walked right over a cattle guard that would eat most horses alive. Not that I view this as a good thing for Spike to do, but it was amazing to watch.

I had to reopen the gates to put him back through before we could continue on our way.

This entry was posted on February 28, 2010 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Burros, Fitness and running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.