Lady is back for the winter

I took Sadie along and took a wee ride on her during the hunt for the horses.  DL and R walked out.  I rode up the other hill just in case the horses were hanging there where they could maybe see horses in an adjoining pasture.   But they were where R headed.   That worked out for Sadie to go a wee bit farther which was good.  It was getting too late for them to saddle Lady and take a quick ride so they just fetched her things and I got home relatively early.  I try to limit politics on FB but don't hide that I'm conservative and I wondered if R was put out to have to spend any time around an eeevil R voter. Of course she could have been put out because I've been immune to her damsel in distress act.

Only this morning after graining did I get Lady and Tanza in the side pen.  I have been sleeping late and not having much energy all month.  Probably job stress plus the fear that I might end up on the endurance BOD although I think that getting on the BOD is not too likely with a field of 18 for 8 slots.  I don't want to just renege if there are a lot of folks who feel that they want a director with my philosophy but I fear it would be a 2 year time sink without me getting anything done in that direction if I do end up elected to the BOD.  Plus shortly after folks started putting their DAL statements online one gal posted about all the people emailing or pm'ing her with whines of "its not FAAAIRRR, this ride was short (I guess it was a long drive and they think folks that can get to more of that RMs or areas rides have an easier path to year end awards?)  

 and "I was not treated well as an LD rider ....."   Thankfully I have not gotten one contact like that.    If the org has become so full of entitled whiny babies I don't want to be too deeply involved.    Are LD riders treated poorly?  Maybe at some rides and when being passed by hot shoe 50 riders.  But Ive ridden many LDs and been at common checks as 50s and I suspect there is a big subset whining over 'slights' like asking them to wait for completion vet checks so 50 milers can get on the trail for their last loop and stuff like that which is not really slighting the LDs,  at rides with 50s and 100s in the same day the 50s waiting for end of ride completions will be asked to be patient so the vets can get the 100 milers on trail w/o going past their hold periods.  Plus hot shoe 50s that are rude when passing are also rude to the slow 50 milers as well if its a multi-loop trail.  

Took Sadie on a short ride Sunday evening.   Riding her at home is pretty fun, that nervous energy magnified by a group of horses makes taking her to organized rides not fun; but at home its cool, almost like being at a ride energy level with Tanza.  

YAY

I felt compelled to nominate myself to run for the BOD of the endurance conference in response to a few issues.   Today the current board announced a motion that addresses one of those issues.   With a bit of luck all the concerns I had will be adopted by other candidates or addressed by the current board, and most folks will not vote for my nobody self.  That would be such a win/win scenario since I really don't want to have to go to the semi-annual meetings plus several conference call meetings each year, a quick scan of recent minutes shows its often 26 people trying to put forth new ideas in meetings with all the time wasting and lack of clear direction one would expect from that and I do not have the charisma or gravitas or whatever to bring order to things like that.  I could have only tried to lobby to set an agenda and have competing proposals written down for members to view ahead of time.

On the bad side I tried to go to the local political breakfast today.  Apparently they do not want people to just show up so they have not updated the location which is a closed down business.  You have to have called or emailed and gotten current information.  So much for "just show up and talk to some folks to find out if I can volunteer to knock on doors with someone and discuss some of the ballot measures with like minded folks to see if they are also thinking about potential bad consequences to proposals that sound good at first scan."  Oh well.

p.s. whine.  I miss the days when I mistakenly thought folks on some bbs or blogs gave a damn about my goals, accomplishments, tribulations.  Turned out that it was only politeness, chance to brag back, or opportunity to be important by offering advise.  But at least it helped me a bit for a time when the fandamily would show boredom if I blabbed for more than a couple minutes about MY life instead of only being their sounding board, shoulder to cry on etc.

Tanzaknight got his 10th ride completion on Saturday

But it was not easy.   Cold wind all day.  Parts of the trail had terrain or trees blocking the wind but the basecamp and vet check area was full wind all day.   I need a crew to remind me to blanket when its cold.  I kept forgetting for a few minutes and then having to fight him being chilled.  Plus I need to work on his recoveries.   He has strong legs but I did not get the speed and hill work in this year like I intended to.  Really need to make that a priority now that his legs have the great base.   So we equalled his 2017 season for # of rides completed.  Finished very strong with the 3 days at Virgin Rim and then coming in 3rd at Greenland.  I was surprised that at that placing as we took over 7 hours to complete and I had thought there were 4-5 folks ahead of the largish group I started with, plus Jimmy the greek passed us.  (He got BC, strong horse, Jim led him out to avoid him getting too wound up at the start, it was great to see him practicing such great horsemanship and it paying off for them)

Tanza is such a trooper.  We started the last loop a few minutes behind the folks I had rode with because of the slower pulse recovery but he caught up and ended up leading them in.  They were great trail partners to ride with.  At the finish line Tanza drank up and then got chilled even though I took him to the trailer to block the wind and got a blanket on him right away.   So lots of walking him tying to get him warm enough to pulse down to 60.   But using the cantle bar for the crupper and the shimming I put on the saddle kept his back comfy.   The pad worked forward, I have got to figure out how to solve that issue.  I'm thinking adding girth straps that velcro around the girth will help and probably a ring at the back of the pad to tie it to the cantle ring would be a good thing. 

I should also figure out what to do for browband.  The band that snapped to the halter was rubbing Tanza's face so I switched to Sadie's browband.  It is too loose for only being on the bridle w/o having the halter through but I like being able to quickly take off the bridle . 

Ugh, Tanza's back is still sore

He is not tender to my finger touch on the spot where the crupper snap rubbed off hair, but I set the saddle on him to check if it was too wide and he was flinching.   Poor guy.   I will try to shim the saddle to make it fit like a more narrow tree.   If I can't get it the way I want I will try to have the saddle maker adjust it.   I feel bad for not picking up that this was going on before now.  But its the nature of horses, they lose weight or whatever and things that had been OK become irritants.  I should know by now that I always have to keep checking things but I got lax.

So I probably will not pre-register for the ride this weekend.  If I can't feel like the saddle will work I need to just skip it.   I really want to go, try to ride faster, see how the crupper change works, equal last years # of rides etc etc but I need to put Tanza's comfort first.

Back from vacation, still weekend and already work stress

Well on the plus side folks did step up and fix some things, including something I had messed up before leaving.

But my *favorite* senior programmer, is trying to make me the culprit for a raid overflowing and its probably him that started the massive job that filled the raid and forgot all about it.   Could be me, I am that forgetful but I don't believe I have done anything with that particular mission in the last few months.  I had some unfinished stuff taking space in other spots though.

Oh well, he did step up and figure out the bug I created in another area.  Anyway I am tired of most of those selfish liberals.  If it came to me being let go I would cry a few tears of shock and fear but I don't think there would be any from sadness to be out of the dis-functional management and away from people who can't recognize commie BS propaganda.  

On the importance of using a crupper

I can be a slow learner. Saturday at SoCo god smacked me upside the head with the "use a crupper" cluebat. Tanzaknight has needed a crupper but with a forward cinch rigging and getting off for steep downhills it did not seem critical and I was nervous that if he took offense when it engaged down a hill I'd get launched because he is such a strong athletic horse. 

So Saturday we had gone down some gradual hills and not climbed anything steep enough to get the saddle back to centered. We are going down a logging road riding on the downhill side of the road. Tanza stumbled, could not recover and went to his knees and then to his side with his feet pointed up the hill. I bailed off as he was falling. A very scary 3 minutes when he could not get up with trail companions trying to pull his head up towards the road wondering if he had a wrecked leg or something. I decided he had room to get back to the road if he got up facing downhill and Dana then pulled on his tail to help him and he got up. I led him a mile down to the Doubloon ranch headquarters and he was walking fine by the time we got there, thank GOD. Ride vet was there and checked him out, no hanging pulse, moving normally so I opted to lead him the couple miles back to ride camp to pull, no need to arrange a trailer for him. 

Tanza didn't get the memo that he was pulled and about a mile from camp he was getting so impatient and tossing his head wanting to hurry along that I got on him and rode the last bit in. He did not get stiff and sore standing in camp with just a few walking breaks and as I was reflecting on "why did he stumble" I finally thought 'the forward saddle is throwing off his center of balance, especially when I pitch forward a bit during a stumble.' So I tried the crupper I had in the trailer on him, taking just a short ride and reaching back to pull on the crupper since I didn't go downhill enough for it to engage on its own, with no issues. Vetted him properly for the RO pull and Sunday pre-exam and the vets did a morning trot out check before the Sunday ride start. Vet saw a mild hitch in his left hind at the first vet check so after the first couple miles of the second loop, having told the person I was riding with that I'd back off the pace on the downhills I got off and lead Tanza down the section where he had fallen on Saturday so he was all by himself and no herd instinct to rush his pace and he finished the ride strong.

It was a wonderful course for the 3rd day. No long climbs up the peaks but some technical sections where the horses had to walk on both the 2nd and 3rd loops. Second loop had some really fun new trail to add mileage. I can not express sufficient thanks to Tennessee, the Lane family, and their neighboring landowners for putting on this ride, sharing their wonderful scenic area with us endurance riders. 

Moral of the story: If your saddle works forward you NEED a crupper.

No Buffalo Creek ride for me this year

My aunt passed away at age 91.   I didn't want to rush home to rush to the ride after going to her funeral in northern North Dakota so I left regrets on the ride's FB page and entered the LaVeta ride for following weekend.   I would have entered BC on Friday to reduce # of bikers met on trail and been on trail in a good thunderstorm if my plans had not been disrupted so I am content with getting some visiting in after the funeral.  But there are not many people dad knows left in that area.   We visited some old neighbors from when dad worked on a ranch down in the sw corner of state for a day after returning to sis's place.   I am trying to nudge dad to replace some windows in the house she rents.   I feel like I have to just give a gentle nudge and let him decide or he will reflexively dig in his heels at being forced.  He tends to think "she is getting the place in my will, I don't have to do full landlord maintenance."   But he is still getting rent and can afford to make the needed repairs much better than she can.

   Her SO got her into thinking they need to keep having a new p/u every few years.   That was not too bad when he was also earning decent money but with his back problems and then getting his wrist wrecked helping a friend move cows;  they are more owned by the pickups than vice versa.   But I don't want to lecture them.  Heck I enjoyed having her luxurious p/u when we took the trip to Texas.  But we would have been fine in my older pickup; it is not uncomfortable.

I am trying to decide if it will be a waste of time to spray burrs today.   There are so many that came up after I had gotten the pens all cleared by the end of June, sighhh.   But I really want to knock them out.  I'm even thinking I should plan to ride early next year then have a planned lull in competition and do a bunch of spraying in June next year.