Shamrock sunday

Saturday night I bought all the pictures Deb and Paschal had taken of Shade the first 2 days since they were planning to leave after Deb rode the 30 and camp in Lusk overnight before driving the rest of their way home.

Sunday morning the alarm went off and it was drizzling, Ugh. I stumbled out and got the horses more alfalfa hay cubes soaked up, then went in to see what I could eat and drink. I added some water to the tail end of my coffee and did my common thing of mixing instant coffee and instant cappacino mix. Straight cappacino mix is way too sweet and instant coffee needs quite a bit of help but together they go down pretty decently. I did not even heat my bacon but just had a peppermint chocolate luna bar and a bit of trail mix and put an extra luna bar in my jacket pocket to munch on later. Neither Shade nor I like cold OR wet. But since Bobby and Tice had helped us get through the day saturday I figured I should not just wuss out, but if the vets had any hesitation I would and they could ride with Ralph and Joann or Scott and Laurie.

Since it was just drizzling but chilly I grabbed the cabelas jacket that was our MRER award for doing at least 5 rides last year. A windproof water resistant jacket with polar fleece lining. Walked Shade over to the vets, told G "it will not hurt my feelings one bit if you have any hesitation about this horse going out today". Alas she gave Shade mostly A's on everything and sent us on. It was actually fairly decent on this first loop. Visibility was very short at the start and one spot on the trail we milled around not knowing where to go. Bobby kept her head and walked over to the left where no one had looked yet and found a knocked down marker. We hollered out for Ralph and Joann and another couple who had been looking for trail also. Ralph and Joann came up quickly and we sent them ahead since they were riding a bit faster than us. The other couple didn't show but we figured we had hollered loudly and they could figure it out.

Shade was feeling good and got into a power trot wanting to catch up to Ralph and Joann's horses. I thought Tice was keeping with us and then I looked back again and he was nowhere to be seen. Pulled up, turned around and back-tracked. Shade was hollering and wanting to run and catch the horses in front but not fighting me, just letting me know she did not want to be out there all alone in the mist. We met Bobby and Tice coming after a bit and Bobby explained that he had to canter to keep up and then he had gotten too wild and she had turned around and walked the other way to get his mind back. I told her to just call out if I needed to slow down and we rode on.

We looped around and got to 'Salvation hill' --Bob says if you don't have salvation at the start of it you will when you get to the top. It is pretty true if you feel you have to tail your horse up the hill to spare them when doing the loop clockwise. I got off to lead Shade down to spare her legs a bit. When I am not fighting gravity I will help her out but I don't walk UP many hills at all. Shade was setting her hind feet down a bit oddly and I thought She had lost her left rear shoe and asked Bobby to stop and wait, had to pee first, then I took my gloves off and untied her spare boot. Picked up her foot and she still has the shoe it was just hiding with the mud. We walked on to the water tank, a nice big platform for me to mount from. Shade had a great drink, Tice swished his mouth out. We went on and after a couple of hundred yards I realized I did not have my gloves. They were NOT in my jacket pockets :( How stupid of me not to tuck them in pockets when I was wearing a jacket that had nice deep pockets. I figured I had probably left them on salvation hill and maybe a volunteer would spy them and bring them in when pulling ribbons and if not they were only $10 and I was NOT going back to look for them, we did not have time nor energy to spare. I was not going to sunburn my hands in the last few miles back to camp anyway.

I stopped at the pickup and traded Shade's saddle and rump rug for her wool cooler to make sure she didn't chill getting vetted. That worked well she had her best CRI of the weekend with 48/48 and mostly A's on things. The jacket had worked really well on loop 1 so even though it was drizzling again after having almost completely quit out on loop 1 the only thing I changed from what I did on loop 1 was changing into dry shoes and socks and adding some semi-disposable shoe covers to head out on loop 2. Bob laughed at my duck feet as I walked over to check out with the timer before we set off on the loop.

Well the rain came back, stronger than a drizzle during this loop. It overwhelmed my jacket, but my feet did get only damp. A little rain snuck down my legs where the elastic was not very tight. We made it through the loop in about the same time as saturday so not too bad. I was started to chill and shucked my wet jacket and L/S shirt I had over my cool max tank top, and put on a polar fleece vest and my duster before going over to P/R and do the vet check. They had moved the vet check into the barn. That was sure nice they could do that. I wondered if they were taking odds if I would fall on my face trotting out the horse in my floppy yellow 'overshoes' but they were a bit hard to get over my riding tennies so I left them on and just took care with my feet; I made it and figured they should give ME an A on gait for not tripping. Shade and Tice were okay to go out, so we headed back to the trailer. It was not raining right then so I left Shade with only the wool cooler, got her and Grey more hay cubes and got into the trailer to get changed into dry clothes. I also made myself eat some trail mix and drink some juice with elytes in. I had used up all my pre-made stuff but the juice worked well.

Since Shade's rump rug had also soaked through I decided to add my old rump rug with is not lined but would keep out any more rain and would block the wind. The rain started to pick up as I walked over to check out, wondering where Bobby and Tice were since I could not see them. They were in the barn and gestured us in. Jill checked her timer sheet and said you're out, just as the rain started coming down in sheets so I replied "like Hail we are" We waited in the barn for 20 minutes and the rain slacked off to just a strong drizzle about 5 pm so we sucked it up and headed out to finish up the ride. The front-runners probably made it in ahead of that sheet rain, but all the other non-turtles were out in at least some of it, some came in while it was still pouring.

We actually got sunshine after about 30 minutes of drizzle. I pulled Shade's polar fleece rump rug accordian strings up so she would not overheat, the other one has a tail string so I left it. A few miles later she was trotting and the neoprene tube I had put over the tail cord on the other rug got to swinging and annoying her so I stopped her and reached back and put it over her tail, so now she had some airflow as well as no more irritation. I do a lot of crap like that on my 'wild ayrabs' ;)

We were trying to keep up a decent trot everywhere the footing was good but we were still around 7:30 pm by the time we finished. The ride had started at 6:40 so we had to be done by 7:55 to complete. Both horses vetted out and got their completions. YAY --Shade has done her first multi-day ride, something Grey never could do, he was always a little lame after 2 days, got completions but was not good to try for a 3rd day. Got back to the trailer and pulled the rain sheet off Grey so he could roll if he wanted. I brushed the worst of the mud off Shade while it was still warm enough to not need a blanket, and put poultice on her legs but did not try to ice them at all this day. She hates icing anyway although she did not seem to mind the pro-choice ice cells under medicine boots as much as she hates actual ice slurry so I think I will order 2 more so I can just do that for all 4 legs in future.

Then I tossed the wool cooler back on Shade and took the horses out to walk and graze. Shade had little interest in walking. She'd find a good stand of grass and stand and eat. Well that was fine after going ~160 miles in 3 days. The rides are sanctioned as 55 miles but the AERC rules are that the distance has to be at least 50 miles but is rounded to the nearest 5 mile point after that so RM's tend to set about 53 miles of trail for a 55 mile event. When the light was almost gone I pulled Shade away from grazing and tucked her and Grey back in their pen, got them more hay hay and soaked hay cubes, a mash, topped off water, put the rain sheep on over the wool cooler for Shade ... pretty much tried to get them set so I could go over and find left overs from the ride dinner and hang out at the bonfire. This day I had to settle for tee-shirt for completion and the leftovers were getting sparse. I did not see any meat and didn't dig in coolers or fridge but just wanted out to the fire with my red beer. But Jill got me a plate of food a little later. Getting married and having kids has brought out a bit of mother hen in her, or maybe it was there before but I never saw it when she was a front runner and I was a putzer on Grey Moun. I had to turn my p/u on to get my furnace to kick on so I could warm the trailer up before crawling into bed. It is not a terribly loud engine, certainly a lot quieter than dad's noisy generator. I felt a little bad about doing that at midnight or after but not enough to crawl into a cold bed after that weekend. I got the horses one last bit of hay cubes and beet pulp while the p/u ran than turned it off and got ready for bed. The furnace kept running after it had had some extra juice to get started, so I was nice and toasty to get into my PJ's before I turned it off and crawled into bed with out setting my alarm :P