Cache Creek Ridge Ride
16 May 2009
Click on lil' thumbnails for larger photos
Before
For the week leading up to this ride we knew it was going to be unaccustomedly hot, hot, hot and so RM Jennifer Stalley planned accordingly by opting to start us at 5:30 am. This produced many groans from me - getting up at 4:30???? ack... but I wanted Tevis training, and that's what I got. I even got training in dealing with lack of sleep and being more uptight than usual, since this would be my first attempt riding booted, having switched over completely to doing my own hoof-care. I didn't sleep well that night, fretting about what I'd forgotten (f'instance, to put a bucket in my crew box to soak my Cool Medic vest in, and to pack the athletic tape to wrap feet with if necessary).
But starting so early worked out well, and to be honest would have been better if we could have started even earlier - they even considered doing it at night but that would have entailed putting out tons of glowsticks.
I opted to not put Roo's boots on the night before, but did pick out his feet and rasp a little bit of heel that wasn't quite balanced.
And I clipped him. How long have I had
horses? 12 years? and this is the first time I've ever clipped a horse. I
wasn't sure how much power I'd have, since I only charged the clippers for
four hours, but in the event, was able to clip everything I wanted to
(even went back for secondses later that night). OK, so it wasn't the
greatest clip job I've ever seen, but hopefully it did the trick. In
retrospect, I probably could have taken off more, but at least got all the
big veins uncovered. Not sure how you're supposed to get those nice
straight lines, though. My clippers don't do those.
There were three vet checks - all out of camp and all three in different locations, which required some mental organizing to figure out what would be needed where.
I ended up with a big crew box for the hour hold - into which went 2 x Size 0 Epics, one water bottle (only one?? what was I thinking? Very little, apparently), a bottle of gatorade, my coolbag with cold gel packs containing lunch of multiple baggies of tempting treat-ettes and the all-saving Ensure, a bag of LMF, a pan for Roo's LMF, and the nearly forgotten bucket for the Cool Medic vest.
Into the Crew-bucket-with-lid-#2 went Mimi's sparesie Renegades, more water, more gatorade, a couple of baggies of treat-ettes, and some powdered elytes (oh, speaking of - the morning I was due to leave, I'd forgotten I'd run out of elytes, so I went via Echo Valley in Auburn and bought a bucket of Endura-Max. Hurray for Echo Valley for carrying these elytes!)
Although we'd been assured there would be horse food out there and that there was grazing at all the checks, the pones weren't that interested in what was available. I'd also thought that Roo would eat the grass as we were going along, but he was too fixated on "going along" so no luck there. Luckily Renee packed a hay bag for the hour-hold lunch check.
Loop 1 - Red
We didn't quite start with the pack, but did get on at the trailer and rode - at a polite walk for once - to the start and crossed the start line at exactly 5:30 by my watch. Roo was well behaved with none of his occasional overexcitement and I was very pleased with him.
Within a half mile, we slopped through a mud-creek half way up their cannons. Hmm, I thought, this ride might prove to be a test for boots.
I thought correctly.
There were four loops - each 12.5 miles - red,
white, blue and
purple.
Our GPS route uploaded to Motion Based: the trail appears to be a tangled mess of loops, but in reality it was perfectly marked and only a lack of attention on our part had us go off trail a couple of times (gawping at the views). Each red dot represents a stop - and NO, not ALL of them were for boot-reapplication (mean spirited, whoever was thinking that) - many more were for the copious water stops along the way.
Also, here's the GOOGLE EARTH version of the trail, showing all the loops, the water troughs (watery squiggles), the mucky creek crossings (anchors), vet checks, and the scary places on the trail (you'll need Google Earth loaded on your computer).
The red loop went up and up and up onto Cache Creek Ridge. Through some boggy bits. About four miles or so from the start there was a lady with Renegades on her horse's front feet stopping and adjusting one of her boots (I'd PnRed this same lady at AR50 three weeks before and noticed Rens on the front, shoes on the back. Good option). 100 yards away from her was another lost Renegade lying on the ground which turned out to belong to Christina Kramlich - a friend of a friend who I'd been meaning to email about boots. She told me I need to tighten Renegades much more than "they said" and to use zip ties.
On long steep hill, Surrita, who was trotting up all the hills like a pro leaving Roo floundering in her wake (one of our current weaknesses is uphill trotting) got ahead of us. No problem, except that right then an over-exuberant horse came up behind Roo causing him to leap sideways while trying to look forwards, backwards and sideways all at the same time. But - hah - our boots stayed on.
Already getting hot and only around 7 am :(
Up further, we sponged in a mucky cow pond. Big fun. I thought Karin Occhialini was going in, then I thought Barbara White's horse was going down, but we got sponging done without incident.
Along a bit further to one of stupendously frequent water stops - small incident here when one of the high school student volunteers had parked his ATV too close to the water trough and wanted to move it. And of course, when it started - 3' from Roo's head drinking in the trough - he leapt sideways. Which then set him off for a mile or so, as we spooked at trail signs, sticks, etc. for a while after that.
Trot, trot, trot along the rolling
Cache Creek Ridge -
nice footing, sort of slightly overgrown with grass single/double track.
Renee's forte, learned at the knee of Sharon Westergard, is to keep moving
in a trot, trot, trot manner. And when we were moving, that's mostly what
we did.
Up one slight hill, Roo suddenly started leaping about in the back - Barbara White behind us informed me "one of his boots has come off". It was hanging off his left rear fetlock. I know why this one came off - when I'd tightened them in the morning, this one hadn't tightened quite as much as the other, which puzzled me but I just thought "oh, bigger foot on that side".
Not.
Got it back on, cranked that sucker tight, found a rock and slithered back
in the saddle again. No big deal.
Off we went again - down, down down. Renee
and I got off and walked a mile - shins wailing pathetically - and it was
starting to get even hotter. The 15 min hold vet check was at the bottom
of the hill and the front runners were starting to come back up the hill
on the two-way trail -
interesting to see who was out front.
Vet check #1 is out of sight in the bottom of this 1,200' canyon.
At the bottom, the 15 minute hold vet check was still in the shade near the creek - nice and cool, but humid. Apparently there was some "sacred ground" here (indian burial ground?), but Renee and I never got to see it. Russell (Renee's husband) was doing In-timing and they had to keep an eye out for people trying to discreetly sidle off and end up peeing on the sacred ground. Bad karma?
We got through here without incident and got out only 3 minutes late (pretty decent). My three directives here were:
- eat my banana: I'd been carrying it in my pocket since the start and unfortunately only half of it was still edible
- get my pad back under the saddle: remember, how I said it doesn't usually slip? well, of course it slipped back again
- checked under all of Roo's gaiters/captivators: amazingly found not a speck of mud under there despite some of the pond sludge we'd been tramping through - nice and clean. Great! Looking good.
On to the white loop... the loop of "incidents"....
Loop 2 - White
 The Old Stage Coach Road
|
 As
we'd been coming down the hill on foot, there were the front runners
going up the hill, trotting. "Wow, I thought, so that's how you
win - your horse basically trots everywhere and probably canters
everywhere else". But I also thought "this hill is
*really* going to suck going back up after the VC". But we were
game.
Up the hill we went and within a minute - agh - Roo's right-rear Ren was off and flapping and he was flailing around. I hopped off, lost my balance on the downside of the hill and narrowly avoided falling backwards down the long steep embankment, causing young Kadee Felton coming past up the hill to compliment my "save" as she went past. :) The boot was packed with scrungy mud which I scooped out with my fingers, jammed it back on, cranked that sucker tight, dragged Roo up the steep hill a little further to a suitable rock and made an inelegant remount (the combination of treeless saddle and cinch looseness means mounting from the ground requires the sort of athleticism that I've never possessed - and likely never will possess). And we were off again. Per the GPS - 3 mins wasted on the
initial left rear boot loss (@ 9 miles), and now another 4.5 mins wasted on this s The hill, as it turned out, wasn't nearly as bad as we thought. In fact it went past much quicker on the way up than it had on the way down. We were kindly entertained by a man and his wife shouting at each other, and by the large man shouting at his horse "don't quit on me now! you can quit at the top!" as he trotted past - this on a hill that Roo and Surrita were gamely puffing up at a walk. Admittedly, his horse did have the kind of excellent drum-stick thighs that I admire so much, but if that's the price you have to pay to get them, I'm not willing. Things were going swimmingly, it was 9:30, we'd been on the trail four hours, the boots were staying on, ish, the pones looked good, there was plenty of water on the trail, it wasn't horrendously yet hot... And then it turned bad, very suddenly. We were on a nice section of trail, and Roo was in confident-mode and had taken the lead - despite the recent sighting of multiple cow herds - and we were flying along at a good clip. There was a meadow - and in the meadow was the lady with the Rens on the front - off an adjusting her boot again.... (It always seemed to be the right front, so I have a feeling she was having the same problem as I later had (more about that on the next loop). ) ... then there was a high trail and a low trail - ribbons on the high trail and a lone ribbon on the low trail under the shady tree. I ended up on the low trail and as I approached the shady tree, I saw a single fence post with some electric fence wire looped around it. There had been lots of cows in the area and to keep them in, they were using a single strand of electric fence wire set at around thigh-height. Ack. I slowed Roo slightly but didn't see wire on the ground and figured that it was just looped around the post, off the trail. Look - it even had a lil' scrap of caution tape on it to make sure you didn't tread on the looped-around-the-post wire. And then Roo stepped on the hidden wire in the grass and it flipped up his legs and all hell broke loose. |
I really thought I'd saved it. I got him spun around a little, him flailing and bucking desperately to get the scary monster off him, me trying to get him stopped enough to regain his brain, but the saddle slipped and he made one more leap and I was off backwards down in a ditch on my head - thinking as I went "OH CRAP - this is just like that kid at Sonoma who's horse fell on them in the ditch".
Thankfully, Roo didn't come over backwards on top of me, but instead set off across the meadow, presumably trailing electric wire around his legs and no doubt slicing his tendons as we went.
It was a very, very bad moment - one that I've had twice before getting tangled in wire with Mouse and still have flashbacks about.
Roo made a short galloping lap of the meadow and came to rest over near some trees where Renee went to recover him. I trudged up, fearing the worse and looking for the tell-tale leg held up, the dripping blood, the head down - and figured once again, as usual, everything we'd worked towards was done for.
...and I looked.
Roo had one missing boot and three remaining boots all of which were upside down on his feet, flipped around the front. Renee went to fetch the missing Renegade (that right rear boot, take note...). There was no blood. There was no held-up leg. Slowly I undid each boot in turn, checking him over carefully for the slice that I was sure to come. But nothing. He had one small scrape on the inside of a front leg - not even suppurating, just missing fur. And that's it.
Huh.
Rob Lydon tells me it was because I was lucky #13 <grin>. Could be. That, or I've been a very good girl recently.
We spent 16 minutes replacing all four boots, me stumbling around, shaking, Renee patiently holding the horses (who were actually enjoying the nice break in the shade). I had to use my Leatherman pliers to re-pop the captivator liner back onto the captivator where it had gotten pulled out. It seemed like an age, but the GPS says 16 mins. Replacing boots in grass is hard - you have to avoid strapping the grass into the boots.
Scene
of the Crime:
The red line is the route we were supposed to take; the
light yellow line is the track I took (you can sort of see a cow path
there); the pink squiggle is the ribbon I was aiming for; the turquoise
squiggles are what I was supposed to see;
the blue lines are the posts - wire was cut between 1 and 2 (3 is actually
behind that oak tree, but I drew where it was in relation to the others);
the green arrow shows where we got tangled (you can't really see the
ditch, it's under the tree); the orangey-yellow line shows Roo's escape
route.
I went back and removed the rest of the wire and hung it on the next post along - post 3. Thankfully, the wire wasn't attached to post 2, just looped on it, and was drooping, hidden in the grass, between post 2 and post 3. When Roo got into it, all it did was unravel from post 3 and get left behind when he galloped off.
We were SO lucky.
We remounted and continued down the trail, relieved to have gotten off so cheaply. Surrita and Renee were safely in the front, Roo seemingly no worse for wear, trotting along behind them. We were on a dry meadow section, with thin, cow-grazed grass on it, mostly bare dirt. Looking good. Phew.
And suddenly Surrita went down, flipped sideways and rolled over on her side on top of Renee.
WHAT THE...?
She'd put her left front foot in a hidden badger hole and instead of sinking in slightly, her leg went in about a foot, and she stumbled and went down.
My first thought was for Renee
pinned underneath her - surely mashed and broken, but Surrita rolled off
her and Renee reappeared under her looking no worse for wear. Surrita
looked mildly surprised and got up and we figured "Broken leg. Or
at the very least, tweaked leg...Dead lame for life..." Walked
her a few steps - absolutely nothing - not a thing wrong with her. Renee
found some branches and jammed them in the hole and remounted and off we
went again - and I'm sure we were both thinking she would be a bit off.
But no. Surrita was completely sound, looking like nothing had happened -
just a bit of duff on Renee's tights.
Huh.
I ended up upside down in a ditch and didn't hurt myself. Renee got mashed flat under Surrita and came off without a scratch. Roo didn't have any cuts. Surrita didn't break her leg - all that happened when she went down and her belly smooshed into the ground, was she let out a fart (Surrita, that is, not Renee).
I think the saving grace was that the hole was facing away from us, so when her leg went in it and she flipped forwards, there was no edge to bend her leg over.
Once again we were SO lucky.
And we had only come 3/10ths of a mile since my incident, 20 miles into the ride. <gulp>
|
Interestingly, as if to reward us, the next section of trail was very pretty - a singletrack switchback with lovely views looking down Rumsey Canyon. Down the switchbacks we went to the vet check by the Bear Creek, glad to be finally done with that loop. We made one last crossing of the bubbling creek (stopping to sponge copiously, since we hadn't seen water for, what? 2.5 miles?? <gasp>) and got into the chaos of PnR sponging and vet checking (and that same shouting couple, still yelling at each other in vet line).
I looked down and noticed that Roo's right rear Ren was completely undone, with the toe strap flapping in the breeze. Odd. I put it down to the creek crossing (note stupid thoughts = heat starting to take its toll). Roo took a while to pulse down - he was hot and standing in the sun. I was hot and standing in the sun. I wanted to go and sit quietly somewhere, but had to sponge and sponge and then feel to see if he was down. He was close, so we went and saw Rob Lydon, while Renee and Surrita saw the other vet. Roo and I passed without incident. He was still getting As for everything (he is Mr Self Preservation - a trait not usually found in geldings). I think the only thing lower than an A was one B for guts - and that was when he was desperate for food, so that wasn't exactly a concern. Surrita did her CRI and, being out
of sight from Roo (her new BFF) for a nano- second, got a 60/68. Not great,
but again, it was hot, we'd only just come in and she's a big bodied mare
(big boned, she is
We withdrew and staggered up the steep hill to where the crew bags and boxes are stashed, super thankful that Russell was there to schlep water and bags and boxes and chairs, etc. The pones ate well. In fact they just about ate everything we had with us. I checked Roop's gaiters and captivators for crud once again - nope, still clean under there. As far as people eating, I've no idea how Renee faired, but I
didn't do well at all. I had cramp in my thighs and rib area and was wriggling
around trying to relieve that. Anyway. Here are my fud successes:
Hmm. Could do better.... At the end of the hold, right as we were actually going to be on time, Renee foolishly checked Surrita's pulse and for reasons unknown, it was at 72. Minor panic ensued. She sponged, she inadvertently removed Surrita from Roo's immediate vicinity (kiss of death), she sponged some more. S went down to 60 and we gingerly tiptoed down to the vet, whereupon she was at 56. <roll eyes> On to the Blue, less incident-prone loop. Loop 3 - Blue We made it most of the way back up the hill - only a mile and half after leaving the vet check - before I heard an odd noise coming from Roo's right rear boot - and almost simultaneously, the rider coming up behind me said "What kind of boots are those?... there's something flapping on one of them...". The toe strap on that RR Renegade had come loose again (remember, this is the one that was "mysteriously undone" after crossing the creek going into the vet check). Luckily, there was a bank right there, so I hopped off, cranked that sucker tight, re-velcroed the strap very carefully and pushed on it to make sure it had adhered properly, looped it into its O-rings, hopped back on from the bank and off we went again. Another two and half minutes wasted on our "let's move out while it's still cool" ticking clock. |
 This cow pond has cows next to it, much to Roo's consternation
|
) . 
Half a mile later - thwap-thwap-thwap - undone again. AGH. I admit it. I said a rude word and was starting to get pissed. I didn't mind a boot coming off after being in a pond, and I didn't mind a boot coming off on a steep hill, and I didn't really mind all four boots coming off from Roo's Escape-From-Wire maneuvers, but the fact that the velcro strap on this boot was now completely useless got me angry. I remembered Christina's words about "zip ties" and gritted my teeth.
Funnily enough, the flapping boot didn't actually come off while we negotiated our way through a herd of cows, past a pond, and up to the next water trough - at that point, I got off again and started rummaging through my pommel bag for something to fix it with... anything... I always have stuff in there for this kind of thing, right?
Wrong.
For once, all I had in my pommel bag were more boots and various munchies that were supposed to tempt me on the trail. Useless. What kind of person rides with so little useful stuff in their packs?? By then, there was a hoard of riders who'd caught up with us but none of them had anything useful either. So all I could do was crank that sucker tight, re-velcro the strap very carefully, and loop it back through the O-rings as tightly as I could, and clamber back on from the edge of the trough and hope for the best. Another 6 minutes wasted. <grrr>
This next section ran along the Old Stage Coach road and being relatively easily accessible by water truck, there were four water troughs in two miles - good stuff since there was virtually no shade up there and the earlier breeze had deserted us and we were starting to bake. We trotted from trough to trough as fast as we could, so we could spend another couple of minutes sponging from the next one. The boot stayed fastened for those two miles, while I formed a plan in my head.
In my pommel bag were the two size 0 Gloves that Roo had been wearing in the back for most of our booted training. They are a smidgin too big for him and I'm not comfortable (yet) smooshing him into the next size down - hence using the Renegades on the back instead. But since the current Renegade wouldn't stay done up for more than a couple of miles at most, I figured sticking a Glove on that foot wasn't going to do any harm. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten to pack the lil' pastern wraps that go under the gaiters, but by my calculations, the next vet check should be in about four miles, and surely there'd be someone at the vet check with zip ties or wire or tape or string or a dog collar or something that I could fix that lame toe strap with and swap the Glove out.
As mentioned a few paragraphs back, the boots were in the bottom of either side of the pommel bag, with bunches of munchies piled on top. Without losing anything out of the bag, I managed to extract the easiest-to-get-at one while we were trotting along so I was ready when we got to the next water stop.
The nice thing about the Gloves is they take about four seconds to put on, unlike the Renegade where I was having to crank on either side of the cable/strap to get it as tight as I could and fiddle with the velcro and the O-rings. So the time taken for my latest boot replacement was hardly noticeable during our latest sponge-fest.
Unfortunately, as is customary for Murphy's Law, the "easier to extract" boot also happened to be the one with the slightly damaged PowerStrap that I'd tried to repair with the use of a large washer a week or two before, without having tried out this bodge. Never mind, eh?
On
we went, up a two mile climb that was the saddest part of the day. The sun
was on full glare, there was no wind, Surrita was puffing rather
dejectedly and a couple of times we huddled in what little shade we could find to let them blow for a
minute.
Many horses overheated on this hill and ended up pulling at the next vet check just because their horses couldn't cool down afterwards.
Worst of all, after the multitude of water stops in the prior few miles, the trough at the top of the hill was down to the last few inches and was warm <sigh>. But we got out of there and down the last mile or so to the third vet check.
The last check was a 30 minute hold and was on asphalt. We dumped our tack as soon as we got through the gate and hot-footed it to the enormous trough being constantly refilled from a water truck. The ground was completely awash with scoop water and we joined in the fray.
Roo was starving and much more interested in trying to eat than be cooled down, so I had a bit of a battle on my hands. After trying unsuccessfully to get some sort of pulse from him (he wouldn't stand still long enough for me to feel it), I got the PnR person to check him and he was still at around 72 (criteria was 60). So I took him to what little shade I could find, smooshing in between other horses to let him eat for a couple of minutes and settle down. Unfortunately, he didn't settle down - too many horses in too small a space, milling about, and it was still too hot. What to do? Stand in the full sun and scoop water on him? or settle him in the shade with some food for five minutes or so? And he was looking for Surrita, who of course had already pulsed down and was obscured by other horses, so his pulse was bouncing up and down. Finally, after ten minutes or so, he did drop to sensible-mode and we were able to start our hold. He just wanted to eat-eat-eat, so I left him alone while I attended to some, er, "personal needs" (i.e. I needed to reapply copious amounts of BodyGlide to the underside of my boobs that were rubbing raw. That's the last time I wear that bra on a hot day).
Sometimes I hate vet checks and this was one of them - there was no rest for any of the participants - just lots of noise and kerfuffle. Apart from drinking some Ensure and some gatorade, not much was achieved. I did manage to check his boots for crud-under-the-gaitor (nothing), and check for rubbing under the pastern-strap-less back Glove, but had lost interest in doing anything about the useless Renegade strap (thinking about it now - I had four very worn Renegades in my crew box - each one with a very serviceable strap attached to it for just this type of occasion - this shows you my state of mind that I've only just figured that out three days later. A hot, stupid girl, I was). During our trot out, the vet didn't note anything odd about Roo's uneven back footwear with regard to gait, so I decided that I might as well just leave the lone Glove on there.
Once again, Russell was there to help us out and fetched our stuff for us and kindly dragged our tack from one end of the check to the other (turns out, we were leaving from the opposite end). That's the thing with crews - you don't notice them because they make your life easier. But you'd definitely notice if they weren't there, though. Thanks Russell!
Loop 4 - Purple
Onwards and upwards - back we went, via the other side of the hill to the warm trough, which by now had no water in it at all.
RM Jennifer told us a story about how they'd put this trail in very carefully, and then two weeks before the ride, there were several days of torrential downpour, turning the new trail to muck - which the cows then promptly decided to walk up the middle of, necessitating them bulldozering it a third time.
My back Glove did pop off on this hill near the top - putting it back on didn't take long. Finding a suitable mounting block took longer, but the GPS didn't notice the stop, so it couldn't have taken that long.
The horses didn't seem to feel too bad - they were hot, but drinking at every opportunity and moving out well in between times. At one point Renee informed me that my RR Glove was starting to turn and I knew sooner or later it would pop off so I might as well pre-empt it by resetting it at the next perfect mounting object. When the next perfect mounting object (a tree stump) loomed on the trail, Roo running along in the front trying to catch the next group of horses promptly spooked at it - resetting the boot for me <grin>.
 Speed
distribution - how long we spent at each speed. I was very happy
with this - even if we did ruin it all by having to stop so often. |
We leap-frogged with the same few groups of people - the lady with the junior who'd had the repetitive problems with one of her front Renegades (I suspect her velcro had given up the ghost as mine had - when we passed her the last time, she was wearing an EZ boot on that foot, so I assume she had to abandon her Ren). We also caught up with some local friends - my vet, Maria de Carlo (riding a 50 for the first time since she broke her pelvis a month after I broke my leg), Jon Saunders and Annabelle Toothaker.
Now, remember me mentioning the slightly bodged PowerStrap on my replacement back Glove? Except for popping off on that first hill and twisting a little on the next, the boot was staying on nicely, but looking down while trotting along, I noticed that the PowerStrap had come off on one side and was now pointing at the sky. Hmm. Even though it was staying on, I figured that I might as well replace it with the remaining "good" Glove, so once again went pommel bag diving, moving all the junk from one side to the other to get at it.
Note to self: if you're going to carry spare boots, put them in a separate bag on their own, so you can get to them without having to completely unpack the pommel bag - which is really hard when you're trotting.
Once again, I was able to extract it and replace the slightly broken-but-still-working Glove at the next trough while we were engaging in the delights of scooping and sponging. The fact that his back foot was submerged in 3" of mucky water was neither here nor there. And I wonder why I was so filthy by the end of this ride?
Elevation
Profile - not much flat on this ride...
The purple loop was mostly devoid of long, hot hills, so we were able to pick up the pace, despite the continuing heat. Not quite as many troughs to start with, but we met Chuck Stalley at one of them and he said that he was anxious that we weren't going to make it back in time - we had six miles left and 1 hour 45 mins to do it in. We assured him we could probably manage that. However, I was worried that his "six miles" might possibly be a guesstimate and didn't know what the trail would be like on the way back and whether we'd be able to make time, so wasn't willing to use the full allotted time just in case.
As we trotted along, I formulated a plan in my head - as far as boots were concerned, I was quite willing to let Roo go barefoot if necessary - his feet are hard and the footing was good enough to do this and I figured it was better to go that route than not finish at all because I was faffing around with boots.
But in the event, it wasn't necessary. Only once more, after going through a knee-deep mucky creek, hot-footing it after Maria's gelding Boomer, who was doing a creditable rabbit impersonation, Roo tripped and one of his front boots popped off (this was a first, apart from the wire incident). Again, I got it back on again and was back in the saddle so fast the GPS hardly noticed we'd stopped. And that was it - for the rest of the ride, all the boots stayed in place.
We went back along Water Trough-Alley, but managed to resist stopping at every single one. Renee kindly shared her pre-mixed elytes with us (another note to self: premixed elytes are a good thing on a hot day when you are heat-stupid. Add another specialized bag to the saddle...).
The last section was down a relatively steep hill and Roo seemed like he was getting uncomfortable, so I hopped off and ran with him down that stretch. He wasn't much better at the bottom and kept stopping for no reason. I suspected he wanted to pee, but he couldn't quite make up his mind - he's not the world's fastest peer, needing to get the circumstances "just right"...
Finally
we crested the hill and across the meadow we could see ride camp in the
distance and I knew we were safe. And in the meadow, Roo figured out that he could stop and pee
and wouldn't die if Surrita didn't stop with him. Good colour.
Back through the mucky creek of first thing in the morning, a mere 11.5 hours later, and we were at the finish.
Let the games begin.
As they say, it isn't over until it's over. Back at
the trailer, I stripped tack, and rinsed off the worst of the crud, while
letting Roo munch for a while - and then Renee wanted to vet Surrita who by
now was joined at the hip to Roo.
It never really occurred to me that they'd have trouble pulsing down, but they did have trouble. After an initial visit to the vet, discovering that we weren't even close to the 60 criteria, and then spending 15 minutes sponging them with warm trough-water, another friend suggested dragging them down to the creek and sloshing cooler water on them there (in actuality, the creek water wasn't much cooler, but there was much more of it).
So we spent probably another 15 minutes standing in the creek, scooping wildly. Roo was miffed that he wasn't getting to eat, I was overheated, he wouldn't stand still for me to take his pulse (on his leg), so we were all getting a little irritable. Finally both horses came back into normal range and we tiptoed simultaneously back over to the vet. Roo ruined this plan by having to stop to roll on the way back (well, he was all wet), so I let him thinking it would settle him some more - which meant that Surrita having arrived at the vet check, Roo-less, was screaming for him. But at least this showed the vet that neither of them were in any particular distress - just too hot. We finally did get our vetting done - but it took about 50 minutes by the time everything was sorted out (and talking to others who came in at the same time as us - they too had some problems getting their horses pulses down).
And can anyone tell me why I didn't think to use the four ice boots I had waiting in the ice chest? or use the melted ice water in the other ice chest? Or even why I didn't think to take his boots off? - not much, but the rubber boots and neoprene gaiters are still going to hold in some heat... Like I said, a hot and stupid girl.
Epilogue: As with all good stories, this one had to have a violent twist at the end - as when the recently-deceased baddy suddenly rears up from the dead for one last attempt to bump off the goody...
As I was stripping Roo's boots off and fiddling around at the trailer after vetting through, Renee came over to talk to me. I turned my back on her for three seconds, looked back, and she was standing with her head between her knees, making retching noises, and sticking her finger down her throat. I wasn't aware of any bulimic tendencies (and in any case, wouldn't a person be a little more secretive about their yakking activities?) and asked her what she was doing. She held up a finger as if to say "Hang on, I'm a bit busy right this moment". I waited and finally after about 30 seconds she came upright again, holding a bobby-pin in her hand. She'd been carrying it around in her mouth and inadvertently nearly swallowed it.
Just think how entertaining it would have been to have to take Renee to the emergency room for surgical removal of a bobby pin? Secretly, I think she was just trying to get me back for making her wait patiently while I reapplied the boots and for riding with her, thus ensuring she would fall off at least once (I feel it is important for my friends to share my unexpected dismounts and am very disappointed in them when they don't participate).
So we made it, even if it wasn't pretty at the very end. But Roop had been in Mr Self-Preservation mode for most of the day and getting As, so I was very pleased with him and the training we both got. It was definitely Hot Weather Horse Management 101 out there - good stuff.
And Renee and I finally got to ride together, after planning it for the last 7 years. Yay!
Actually - eternal gratitude to her for being so patient throughout the repetitive boot replacement activities - and to Russell for crewing for us both - schlepping boxes and bags and buckets of water for us. In the heat, we both got stupid, so it was good to have someone to back us up.
This
is the first time I'd met Surrita and she is the coolest mare and a real pleasure to
ride with - she's another horse that doesn't "make Roo crazy".
She's so laid back as to be in her own zen-like state - she goes along,
bottom lip flapping, head nodding from side to side, metronome legs
pushing her up the hill - she definitely knows her job. Given how little
conditioning Renee had managed to get on her in the last couple of months,
she did great.
Round Up
Lucy Food:
In a word, I have to learn to eat. I don't care how hot I am or how queasy from overload, I have to get stuff into me in order to avoid "the stupids".
Figure out cramps. More Gu? Drink tonic water?
Roo Food:
- More pre-mix elytes
- More sloppy grain-type stuff
Saddle:
- Separate bag for boots?
- Separate bag for elytes?
- Spare Ren Straps
- Spare Pastern Wraps
- zip ties/wire/useful "stuff"
- more duct tape
- Athletic tape?
- Tie pad on
Cooling:
- Strip tack
- Strip boots
- Use ice
- Clip more
Boot Problems:
* Bolded incidents were
one-offs.
* Non-bolded incidents were all related to the same RR
boot failing.
* Colour of cell represents loop we were on.