FUN FUN ride saturday at Turkey Creek

I took Shade to Turkey Creek and rode a 50 on saturday. What a BLAST. She motored through it like she was just tickled to be able to power trot and canter after having to walk 90some miles through the ND badlands with lame Razz and the parents that cant handle bouncing anyway. We were done before 2pm with a 7am ride start. WooHoo. Only 1 hold of an hour which helped. Part of the course was winding along a brushy fenceline, periodically having to detour a bit away from the fence around patches of scrub oak, boulders, little gullys etc; some of this through gopher dug ground that had to be walked or just slow trotted through so that was a nice break from the two track and gravel roads that just invited a fast pace.

The only stress was riding with just one shoe left from my 6.5 weeks shoeing job. I was too lazy to pull the good shoe after removing the twisted back shoe before the ride and had thought perhaps there would be a farrier riding there and I could pay them to spend 3 minutes doing what takes me 20+ minutes. Well I ended up just using a hoof boot over that shoe for the first 25 mile. 1 mile before the end of that loop one of the riight front hoof boot came off and I just picked it up and carried it the rest of the loop. Well I didn't pay any attention when I put it back on to go back out and repeat the 25 mile course and it popped off after just about .5 mile --the gaiter was ripped. I tried putting it on again and it made it only a hundred yards.

So my laziness sort of saved the day -- I took the hoof boot that was over the one hind shoe off and put it on that right front foot and rode the 24 miles that way. Jim caught up with me while I did that. He had some trouble following the trail the first loop. We rode about 18 miles together and then Shade was wanting to munch a bit and walk when he took off from a water stop and I decided the pace had been pretty fast for her and I should ride the last alone so she wouldn't push herself too hard. I think that was the best thing to do. She walked a lot and acted a bit like she had hit a wall, then grabbed some grass as we walked through a meadow portion and after that she was ready to do a medium trot most of the way to the finish line.

So that was a really nice riding feel, like I had enjoyed at Shamrock where I was able to finish with time left and not feel exhausted. The Sturgis, and Laramie rides had drained me with ending up being all day affairs in warmer temps. *I* could have ridden another ride like this one, but I felt like Shade had done plenty after just 3 days rest between getting home from the trail riding trip and going to this ride. Besides I didn't want to push my luck with the hoof boots.

I dragged Grey along just to keep the chores a bit closer to what they had been during the trail riding trip. He was gang-pressed into giving L's cute little daughters pony(lead-line) rides sunday morning. He didn't seem to think that was too bad. Bugger didn't want to let me catch him on friday; Sadie was all eager and almost went with me but she wouldn't load (I have not ever loaded her into my gooseneck, only into the stock horse BP) so after a few times of Sadie of stepping in with her front feet and backing out I got her to take an extra step with the fronts but still not lifting the hinds in and *I* asked her to back out and called it "a good trailer loading practice session" and went back and took the 10 minutes to catch Grey. I think he was worried he was going to have to do a hunting trip excursion so it was probably good for him to just go and hang out and eat and do no more than give pony rides for a couple laps around the arena.