Things just never go right...

Saturday the 25th was our second LD ride.  The Spirit of Texas Endurance ride at the LBJ Grasslands.

Now, since I've gotten the horses AND gotten a trailer, the LBJ Grasslands was one of my "Want to visit to ride" destinations.  How wonderful for me that the stars aligned to have an endurance ride at a location I wanted to ride at!!

Ohhhhh Universe.  Why do you mock me?!

The week leading up to that weekend, I had plans.  Every single day of the week was planned in an attempt to ease the transition for me to make the trip to the ride nice and smooth.

Funny thing about plans.  Mine always seem to never go smoothly.

So, that's how I found myself on Sunday before the ride using the PVC prep and cement to prepare my portable corral panels.  Oh, what a non-surprise, I was short a length for my 5th panel.  Fine, I'll make do with 4 instead of 5.  Except Joe went and grabbed the size I needed for my 5th panel on Monday and completed it for me.

Monday, ran to the barn to do a very light session with Strider.  Between the weather forecast, and Joe being out of town starting Wednesday, I knew I needed to try and work Strider at LEAST once more before our ride.

I also needed to do this as I had re-rigged my saddle, and I know, I know, I KNOW you simply DO.NOT.CHANGE.ANYTHING. right before a ride.

I don't recommend anyone do this. 

Now that I've said that; re-rigging my saddle worked wonderfully.

I bought a (used) Toklat saddle pad that's grippy on the bottom, 2 60" long latigos and a 30" roper style cinch.  And this all seems to have pretty much solved the issue I battle with saddle slip.  The pad grabs, and having the back of the saddle snugged down helps as well.  And it seems to work well on Strider.  I also did a quick step-stool/mounting block "stand STILL damn horse!!" lesson.  Saddle stayed put, and Strider eventually figured out that it was easier to just stand there with a foot cocked than to move away from my step stool (this lesson did NOT translate to our ride on Saturday with all the other horses trotting up and down and warming up right by our campsite).

Took him to the arena and we lunged for about 15 minutes in the saddle, then I decided to mount up.  And this was the real test of my saddle since mounting is when it always slips because I can't pull my fat ass into the saddle. 

Stayed put!!  YAY!!!! 

So I rode Strider around at a gait and a canter for about 10 minutes and called it a good solution.

Tuesday.  OHHHH Tuesday.  You were not a friend of mine.

The plan:
Take the truck to work, swing my Tractor Supply after work (which meant getting to the barn later) to get the 35 gallon water tank and the hay bale I needed, more treats and some VitaCalm.  I was hoping to get some wax crayons, but they didn't have any.  Ugh.

Did manage to get in and out and run to the barn.

The plan was to hitch the truck and trailer and do a trailer loading lesson and maybe one more gentle workout since it would be the last time before our ride.

NONE of that went right.  NONE of it.

Well, not entirely true I suppose.

I get to the barn and go to hitch up to the trailer.  After the million and one itty-bitty adjustments to get the ball under the neck (I want a wheel for my trailer SOOOO badly!), I started cranking down to drop the hitch on to the truck.  Crank down.  And down.  Down more.  Uhm, leg's all the way retracted, and I'm still over the ball.  WTF?!

Then I realized that it was because I keep a very LARGE block of wood to rest the leg on, and so now the entire trailer's hitch is sitting on this block, and unable to go any lower to drop on the ball.  Oh lovely.  Now what do I do?!

Thankfully, Joe came out with the hydralic jack we have, cranked the hitch up, we removed the wood and slowly lowered the hitch on to the ball of the trailer.

Sadly, this all ate in to my trailer loading session time. 

Not.  Good.  Because there wasn't another single opportunity for me to get to the barn before Friday morning to practice.  We had thunderstorms predicted (which we got), which meant I couldn't get the trailer back down in to the valley the barn is in (it's a gravel road in and out for the trailers). 

The sun was quickly fading, but I decided, well, I'm calm right here, right now.  Let's just see where we're at.

Let me back up for JUST a moment.

I have a 2 horse straight load trailer.

I've tried to get Strider to load.  Usually this involves removing the divider in my trailer, opening both back doors and me getting inside the trailer while someone gets behind him and wacks him on the butt with a carrot stick to get him in. 

I've taken him to a few places, but it's always taken someone else to help me get him in.  One time I actually allowed someone else to try and load him, but he outwitted them (they'd make him back up fast-fast-fast, so he learned he'd just stop further and further away from the trailer.  I did mention he's a Jerkhorse, right?).

I have NEVER successfully loaded my horse alone.  EVER. 

So, back to the present attempt at trailer loading.

I have a long cotton lunge line, so I used the center dividing pole in my trailer as a guide to keep Strider's head straight, and I stayed outside of the trailer so I could tap his butt to get him in.

He acted terrified and tried to dance around the side of the trailer.

"OH NOOOOO!!!  I'm so SKEEEERED!!!!"

Jerkhorse.

I just kept his head pointed forward and tapped his butt.

In less than 2 minutes, he loaded up.

I cannot express my shock and delight.

Figured it was a fluke, but I let him take a break, scratched him, praised him, then had him back off.

Then I loaded him again.

Gave him a break.

And loaded again.

We slowly yo-yo'd in and out of that trailer about 5 or 6 times before I was convinced my horse could load and WOULD load with just me there.

And with that, I turned him lose with a promise to see him Friday morning and headed home.

After I got home, Joe and I finished drilling holes in my panels, then headed for bed.

Wednesday evening saw me racing home after work to grab Kaylee so we could do some shopping for the weekend.

The water tank doesn't come with a hose attachment.  I needed one.  I also needed a few things from Home Depot and I needed some groceries, which she and I grabbed.

I got her to bed around 10 pm, then started trying to get the hose attachment on my water tank so I could get it loaded and filled with water the next day.

I wrestled with it.  I fought with it.  I'd fill it up a little bit to see a slow drip of water.  No good.  I didn't dare risk my precious water to a slow leak.  Tried again.  Same problem.  And again.  STILL same problem.  Around and around and around I tried to fix it. 

I failed.

And I gave up after midnight.  I still needed to pack and get ready and now I was in a tizzy about not having enough water.

Thankfully our friend's husband came over on Thursday evening and got it done.  So I was able to load my saddles and non-food items in to the trailer Thursday evening.

You're exhausted reading this?  Imagine how I felt actually doing it!!  And we haven't even gotten on the road yet!!

Lunging As A Stand In For Riding...

So I'm rolling in to week 2 of lunging for conditioning. 

I did commit and did 3 days last week.  And, for fun, I decided to see how Socks handled it on Thursday and Friday.

Surprisingly well it turns out.  So much so that I dropped the $15 with AERC and registered him.  So he's now my offical back-up horse.  Funny thing is that I really REALLY want to try him out on a 25, but I'm committed to Strider and getting his miles going.

It might be that I'll start taking both and riding one on one day and the other the other day.  We'll see.  That's a sizeable financial investment, so we'll see.

For the moment, I'm carving out the time to go to the barn 3 nights a week.  No lies, this is hard sometimes.  Fighting rush hour traffic is NOT fun for me.  Depending on what time I leave work (3 nights a week we're allowed to leave 30 minutes early to do exercise time), it takes an hour to an hour and a half to get to the barn.  Battling traffic that's mostly at a stand still.  I cannot express my loathing for Austin rush-hour traffic.  But I do it because it's exercise for me and exercise for the horses.  But it's hard.

I will say this to any potential Limited Distance/Endurance riders with children at home; this would NOT be possible if it weren't for my husband at home with the baby and the kids.  I have NO idea how single parents do this.  I couldn't and wouldn't attempt this (and certainly not with a 7 month old child at home) without help. 

The reality is my day begins at about 6am and most nights I'm getting home around 8:30pm.  Joe makes dinner and takes care of Kaylee until I get home. 

Anyway, I've started to lunge in the arena as our round pen is on a hill, and while I like the idea of them having to work on a hill, it's too much to ask all the time in an 60ft round pen. 

So I clipped Socks to the lunge line yesterday and lunged in our arena. 

He really has a very nice extended trot and really just takes it nice and easy on himself.  He's figured out that he really has no idea how long the session will be, so it's best to just take things at a nice and easy trot.  I usually lunge 5 minutes each direction with a break in between to check on them.  We work mostly at a trot with brief moments of canter interspersed. 

There are some poles in the arena, and I could see him looking down and carefully placing his feet over them.  It was kind of adorable. 

As I'm trying to get both horses to associate this work with something fun at the beginning and end, I do bribe with horse treats.  I offer them treats when I catch them in the pasture (I hate chasing my horses down in 100 acres when they REALLY don't want to be caught).  And, when I finish up, they get about 6 more treats.  2 are just "gimmie" treats that they get without working for them.  The final 4, we're working on "bow" (I bring the treat down towards the ground between their front legs).  One, I figure it's a fun little trick (I would eventually like to teach them to put a knee down on the ground; imagine how much easier mounting would be if I could get my horses to kneel or lay down!), and two, it just gets them to stretch their neck down.

So, I wrapped up working with Socks.  Opened the arena gate and told him he was free.  And he just stood there for a bit hoping for more treats.  Then slowly walked out.  He's a real spitfire that one.

I will admit while I'm trying to leg him up, I do worry about making him hot for guests and friends to ride.  And then he does things like that and I realize that he's just a laid back guy who takes life in stride.  "Want me to go 25 miles mom?  Sure, I'll do that, and I might even have a few stupid moments, but I'm not going to kill myself to win the darn thing!"  And I'm good with that!  I still want him to be my safe, family friendly horse.  If he ever shows signs that he's getting hyped up and hot, I'll stop conditioning him for LD/Endurance.

After Socks, it was time to work Strider.

Now, he was in time-out.  The BO got a new horse in, and she said Strider spent the previous day chasing her all over the place like he wanted to kill her.  Which is odd.  Strider usually LOVES the ladies, but apparently not THIS lady.  So, Jerkhorse got put in time-out up by the barn with his "I love to hate you" buddy Fuego.  And he kept pacing and zooming around the time-out pen.  So, he had been working himself, and I -almost- copped out and said he'd been working himself, why should I add to his workload.  Except, something someone said on Facebook echoed to me "Don't waste your time with 'junk' miles.  Make each mile count." 

And all he was doing while zooming around were junk miles.  NOTHING useful, nothing with a purpose except to display his frustration at being put up and away from "his" herd.

So, I grabbed him and down the hill to the arena we went. 

Now, when we first entered, he was acting like he wanted to roll.  I'm good with a rolling session, so I unclipped my lead rope (needed to put the lunge line on him) and gave him a few moments.  Then realized he just wanted to graze.  So, as I went to go get him, he scampered off.

Oh no.  Oh NO you did NOT just run off from me.

So I made him think he was gonna die.  I got after him and swung the lunge line around my head to get him to move out.

And learned a kind of cool thing about him.  Even in the arena, he lunges in a circle.  Okay, cool.  I can work with that.  I prefer to not use a line anyway, so we worked our circle.  And we put in our time. 

Strider does better when the sun's not on him.  The sun was starting to set while we worked, so he was in the shade for the whole 20 minutes and he wasn't breathing hard.  Some of that is (I hope!) he's starting to get in to condition, and some of it is lack of sun on his body.

I'm still considering shaving his neck for the ride next weekend.  I am certainly going to braid up the little amount of mane he has.  I'm just trying to brainstorm ideas to help keep him cool to help him pulse down.

Some things I'm considering doing and/or WILL be doing:
Having a water bucket and a flake of hay waiting at P&R (WILL be doing!)
Taking 2 of my frozen 1 gallon water jugs to use at P&R to dump over his neck (fairly certain I'll be doing this) - my rational is that the water will melt while we're riding, so still be cool.  I'll take 1 up to P&R while we ride first loop, then, after he vets in, go and get jug 2 to leave for loop 2. 
A blanket/rug/tarp to drop my saddle on before we go to P&R (WILL be doing!)
Shaving his neck/rump.  I'm still torn on this.  I might shave them down on Sunday

I feel like I learned a lot on my first ride, and I'll forever be grateful to Lynne for sharing knowledge with me.  I honestly believe if it wasn't for her help, I would NOT have gotten a completion for our first ride.  Now, I've got to build on that knowledge and make our second ride even better than the first was. 

And, after our second ride, we'll have 2 weeks until our 3rd (and final) spring ride for the season.  Where I'll keep working to improve our time.  And our conditioning. 

Then I've got to figure out how to continue conditioning over the summer.  In the Texas heat.  I think I'll be doing some hauling over to McKinney Roughs or other areas where there is lots of shade to ride on the weekend, or else get up early and try to squeeze in a ride on the weekends both Saturday and Sunday.  I'm not sure how to handle Monday through Friday yet though.