I've been riding Patch most of the winter, but just maybe once every couple of weeks on nice days which was enough to keep him from getting too far out of condition during the winter. Now it's time to get serious. At this time I just have one horse in training for endurance, but am looking for another one to buy. I have 3 retired endurance horses and one active one, Patch, a half Arabian whose sire was a registered Paint (mostly Quarter Horse). Breezy, the most newly retired of them, is a half Arab and half Quarter Horse that carried me over 6000 miles in endurance competitions over an 11 year period, so I am convinced that it is a good mix. Patch is beginning his 3rd year in endurance competition, and is 10 years old.
Do you ever ride the retired horses just to keep them in shape?
I have noticed that you use beet pulp. Do you think it would help put some weight on Belle and if so, how would I use it? I have never dealt with it before.
Yes, it would help her! Many of my endurance riding friends use it to put or keep weight on a horse as well as to provide energy and moisture in the horse's gut, which is very important to keep a hard working horse hydrated, and it also works to help prevent winter colics that are due to a horse not drinking enough water to go with all that dry hay. There are 2 kinds, one is shredded and absorbs water in about 20-30 minutes, the other is pelleted and needs several hours. I use the pelleted kind, as do most of the endurance riders. It absorbs about 5 times it's volume in water, so you want that to happen in a bucket instead of in your horse where it might cause dehydration. Start with about a pint of pellets, add 2 1/2 quarts of water and wait a few hours. You can mix the regular grain with this. Increase a bit every few days. It works well if you soak it for all day or all night, but don't soak too much at a time because it will sour and ferment.
Thanks. I'll get some right away. She is a sweet horse and whether we keep her or sell her I want to do the best for her.
We keep mineral blocks in all the stalls to keep the horses drinking but they don't all lick the blocks a lot. A friend has a mare that goes through her blocks so fast I think she must be biting off hunks. She drinks about 20gal of water a day and her stall has to be changed often. But she is prone to colic so the salt block is a must.
I really appreciate the horses that do their business all in one corner. Makes picking the stalls a lot easier.
Patch and I are on our way to the first ride of the season. An hour from home I pull into a rendezvous point to wait for another rider who planned to travel with me, but after half an hour I call to leave a message on her home phone to let her know I'm going on. After crossing into Washington I find a sporting goods store to buy a parking permit for state land or risk getting a ticket for several times the cost of the permit. Then it's on to ridecamp.
My teammates have saved a spot for me. The rider who was supposed to meet me had come with another rider and had tried to call me but my line was busy. I get Patch set up with a hay bag and buckets of water, then go to fill out paperwork and enter the ride, visiting along the way.
Yikes! so far there are 86 riders signed up for the 50 miler! I consider changing my plan and riding the 75, but since my knee gave me fits last year I decide to stick with the 50 and see how it goes. I've been doing ankle strengthening exercises all winter and need to see if that has really made any difference. So far, at home, riding 25 miles hasn't bothered it. Doubling the distance might be ok, but triple might not. I take Patch to be vetted in, good timing as the line is short and we don't have to wait long. He passes ok.
I saddle Patch and go for a short ride with a rider who has asked to ride with me tomorrow. By the time we finish about 4 miles she has decided to try to find a slower rider. She and I haven't ridden together before, but we see that Patch is probably going to be wanting to go faster than she wants to travel. Two other friends and I decide to start out together in the morning and see how it goes.
My team has enough riders to get points on all 3 distances if we all finish. After a spagetti dinner "next door" and the ride information meeting, I put a blanket on Patch, check his water, give him more hay, soak some beet pulp in a small bucket for tomorrow, lay out some items I need to have in the morning, and go to bed.
The 75's are on their way at 6am, it's still dark, the 50's will go at 7. As I exit the trailer it is just light enough to see without a flashlight. I make sure Patch hasn't run out of hay or water overnight, then make my way to the plastic throne. OOO cold seat! Minimal time spent there but it does wake me up! Back to my warm trailer to eat yogurt, banana, mixed nuts, vitamins, and decide how many layers I will need to wear for riding. By the time I get Patch ready to go I decide to leave my jacket. There are clouds, but in the desert that doesn't usually mean rain. I hope I have guessed correctly.
We let some of the faster riders start ahead of us, then go along a small gravel road at a walk toward the start line, giving our numbers to the ride manager as we pass her. So far Patch is walking calmly, I hope it lasts.
The trail starts off as a single track. We trot slowly and catch other riders who left earlier and are still walking, go past those and soon catch others. Patch is excited already, and I have a feeling it is going to be a long day. The first loop is 14 miles and 99 riders will not have much room to spread out, plus there are no trees, just a lot of little hills and canyons, so it is hard to be out of sight of other riders for very long. The two riders I started with have gone on ahead and now I am riding with a lady named Terri, trying not to go too fast. Patch is not happy with the slow pace.
About 2 hours after we start we are back in camp for the first vet check. There are quite a few horses in line ahead of us. We feed our horses handfulls of hay as we inch along toward the vet. Both horses pass the tests, then we pull off to the side of a waiting area for a 15 minute hold which is over almost as soon as it starts. We actually used up about half of the time just going though the vet line. Somebody holds my horse while I run to the outhouse.
No rain so far and it is warm enough for another loop without a jacket. The day is cloudy but not windy, just a breeze that feels good. On this loop we catch up with a rider who has a bell on her horse's breast collar. She may enjoy it or not even hear it anymore, but it irritates everyone else. We pass her and then she tries to keep up with us. Soon we decide to let her pass us and get far enough ahead to we don't have to listen to the bell. That's fine for a couple of miles, then we pass her when she is adjusting tack. A few minutes later we hear her behind us again, slow down and let her pass but a few minutes later there she is again, walking her horse, we pass, she speeds up. Grrr. We pass some other riders and hope she will stay behind them. Nope, there is that bell again!
Patch has been prancing, cantering sideways and making me work hard to stay balanced. I'm also working hard at staying calm although he is driving me nuts. Finishing this loop brings us to the halfway point of the ride.
When we come back into camp for the next vet check and 45 minute hold, I wonder if we will get through it before our hold time expires. Besides a lot of 50 milers, there are also a lot of the 25 milers who have finished the first half of their ride. After we inch our way through the line and have our horses checked, we go to our trailers for the remaining hold time. Patch eats his beet pulp with some grain and vitamins, I eat another banana, and drink some v8 juice, have another handfull of mixed nuts and a couple of peanut butter cookies.
The overcast has thickened and the breeze has increased so I wear a jacket for the next loop. We have done a 14 mile loop and an 11 mile loop, now we are out in another direction on a different 14 miles. After about 2 miles we hear that bell again, we trade places a few times, pass other riders we hope she will like better, but just can't seem to loose her for very long. We are riding a fairly consistant pace, she is going fast, slow, fast, slow. Even without the bell that is enough to drive us nuts (in this case we decided it was dingy), so we decide that we will take a few minutes longer at the next hold to let her annoy somebody else.
My riding partner's horse is a bit lame, so she is finished for today. I still have 11 miles to go. I decide to give Patch a few extra minutes to eat, give the bell rider time to get a couple of miles ahead of us, then go out alone. Patch trots quite happily alone, not fighting me at all. We pass a few slower riders, he just trots by and doesn't get excited. Then I hear that bell again. We trot on past her but she follows us. Nope, I decide I'm not doing that again, I put Patch into a canter and after about half a mile or so the bell gets farther and farther behind us. Ahhh. Quiet.
Having opened up a nice space between ourselves and the bell I bring Patch down to a fast trot. We pass about 10 other riders in groups of 2 or 3. About 2 miles from the finish, the leader of the 75 mile ride comes past us at a canter. He keeps looking over his shoulder to see if we are trying to keep up with him. Nope. He might be thinking we are also 75 milers since the number on Patch's hip is impossible to read.
We stop at a water tank, Patch gets another good drink, then we trot on at a speed that makes Patch happy, and makes me happy too since I don't have to fight for balance. I've come to the conclusion that I will be doing a lot of miles alone on Patch to have us both stay sane. We top a hill and decend into camp, walking for the last quarter mile on a gravel road. The sky behind camp is blue-black with showers hanging from the clouds but probably not reaching the ground. I can see streaks of lightning but don't hear thunder, so they are several miles away, and I hope they stay there.
The vets want to see the horses without tack at the end of the ride, so after the finish timer records our finish time on the vet card and her time sheet, we go to the trailer. I untack Patch, put a wool cooler over him and give him 5 minutes to eat a bit of hay, then we walk back to the vet area to get our completion check. By then his pulse is down to 60 and everything looks and sounds good! My knee is doing quite well, Praise the Lord! There is a dull ache but no real pain and I didn't take any ibuprophen all day. Last year I was taking a lot of ibuprophen and it was very painful.
Some of my teammates have already finished, a few others are still out on the trail. We each did our own crewing today because we didn't have anybody to do it for us, and we camped close enough to the vet area to not waste much time walking back and forth. Patch gets a coat of cooling clay on his legs, his heavy blanket to keep him from chilling in the wind, and more hay. I grab a bottle of juice and go to find a friend. We visit in her camper until it is time for the potluck. It's going to be a cold, quick dinner. I brought a berry pie and will be surprised if I get any of it.
The last of my teammates finish the 75 at about dark and their horses are already unsaddled and blanketed before I get back to our camp area. We visit a bit but it is too cold even with my barn coveralls to stay out there very long. I turn up the furnace in my trailer living quarters, carry 2 more buckets of water for Patch, check his hay and go to bed.
In the morning I put on the insulated coveralls again since there is frost on the ground, and we stand around trying to take advantage of any warmth from the just rising sun while we recieve our awards. I'm surprised to learn that we finished 54th out of 99 starters, not bad considering all the time we wasted. Subtracting mandatory hold times from total start to finish time put us at just about 8 hours for 50 miles.
It didn't take long to pack up and be ready to leave. A couple of the Idaho riders followed me to a cafe where we visited and had a hot breakfast. I think the place has changed hands in the past year, it wasn't as good or as fast as before, but we did get plenty of food.
Here is a link to pictures from the ride. There are 2 pictures of me, look in the next to bottom row for a light blue baseball cap, and then the next picture is me on Patch leaving the vet check with my riding partner following us.
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