Monday, April 23, 2012

side note

Watching Major contentedly eating grass, I thought about our ride yesterday. For all my talk, all the horses were actually very good. And looking at Major I also remembered another cool point: all the horses were barefoot.

And I don't mean we wore our hoof boots. We all went naked feet, quickly over that rocky singletrack, almost 10 miles, no flinching or problems. An Arab, an Anglo-Arab and a Spotted Saddle horse, who all live on irrigated pasture.

It works for us, and that is very cool.

That being said, I am gluing on boots for my LD. Some might think that is overkill, just for the LD. One less thing for me to worry about. I love my boots, despite some glitches I need to iron out, but I'm already thinking about enough things. When I knew my trimmer was gluing for B and Ziggy, I just decided to go that route, for this time.

In another note: no back soreness today with the new pad inserts. Saddle still doesn't fit obviously by the white hair, but this should get us through the ride. After that we'll reevaluate.

Major is pretty happy with just grazing all week. He thinks we should do this ALL the time. When I remind him that we do, he can't hear me over the munching.


shiny, happy pony munching...


8 comments:

  1. It is pretty cool that we can cover that trail so fast without any hoof protection :-)
    Watch out AR here we come!!

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  2. Just inform your lazy pony that the more he works, the more he gets to eat luscious green grass. ;) Tell us all about how the gluing thing goes! I am holding out on gluing til I have two 50s in a row, but I'm not sure that's the best idea...

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    1. I wasn't going to glue, but since I keep having the issues, I decided just to do it. This trail has lots of sections where they can catch themselves and such, so if anywhere is a test, this would be it. This is the ride that Mel from Boots and Saddles lost her boots like 50 times, not for me, almost no room to pull over, etc. I'll let you know how it goes. My trimmer has done it before, I'm going with experience and NOT doing it myself.

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  3. He looks great! Wahooo, excited for you guys, have a great time this weekend!

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    1. thanks! One of these days we'll hopefully all meet at a ride!

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  4. If I had a ride coming up that I was worried about I would absolutely glue on boots - whether it was an LD, a 50, or a 100. Could I have done Tevis in strap on boots? Probably. Did I need one more thing to worry about. No. I glued. For Farley's first ride back I'm going to glue on hind boots. I'd probably be just fine in strapons all theh way around, but again, with how stressed I'm going to be about that tendon and her behavior, I don't need to worry about my boots. Glueing on boots is less stressful than say deciding to shoe, because if one comes off, it will come off clean and I'll put on a strap on --> no stress. But yeah - just wanted to comment that I completely understand and would totally do the same:). Good luck at AR!!!! Getting some rain now, but hoping that the trail stays ridable enough that it isn't an issue.

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    1. You'd mentioned glue-ons a few months ago, and I really thought the boots would be fine. But with so much to think about, I just needed one less worry! Good plan with Farley, it's almost like starting all over again with your time off. AR should be interesting, lots of trail changes (moving the start, the bypass instead of Cardiac Hill), but I hope we're up for it! Thanks!

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