Rides of March pictures

A couple of people asked for pictures, so here's all I've got. I think I only took the one picture on Saturday at the vet check, the one of Dixie at the trailer in the snow. It was too cold to take my gloves off, and my gloves were too damp to work the iPhone.

Ridecamp:



Storm coming in. This is like the worst picture ever, because you (the reader) don't know that you're barely seeing a huge range of mountains behind that storm front.

From 2010, same general view, with huge mountain range visible:


Cersei:
:P

DEATH TO STICKS!


Ride meeting:



One of the ride photos:


Vet check:

Nutriton and errata

Nutrition:
So way back at the end of January, I meant to buy some beet pulp and force my horse to learn to eat the stuff, but I was busy fixing the kitchen and I forgot until "too late." It takes horses a while to develop the right gut flora to properly digest beet pulp (and sometimes, the taste buds to appreciate it), so it's not something I wanted to start feeding a couple weeks before a big ride. Toward the end of February, I remembered, but it was too late!

I've offered her BP a couple times before - when I first got her, and again when we first moved to Nevada, and both times she was like "ugh this sucks" whether I gave it to her soaked or dry. (Please go read this whole article before you tell me that dry beet pulp causes choke/dehydration/stomach explosions.) But she's an endurance horse now, and she's learned to eat wet hay and wet mashes and by god she can learn to eat wet BP!

Yesterday, the titanic struggle began. I offered her the usual one pound of LMF ration balancer, Vitamin E, and salt, with about a cup of BP and a splash of water. She was mad. I tossed in some carrots too. She was mad and stomped and pawed and glared at me and ate about 3/4 of her meal.

Today, I gave her the exact same thing as yesterday. After I threw her hay and fed the chickens, I went and checked and she'd eaten every single molecule in her bucket and licked it clean. Well. That was easy.

I've been thinking about two other nutriton topics, too: calcium and fat.

Distance horses use a lot of calcium (you run the risk of thumps or tying-up if the horse doesn't have enough calcium available), but paradoxically, if you feed a lot of calcium in the diet on a regular basis, the levels of blood calcium drop and the horse is at a greater risk of tie-up. The ideal is to feed a pound of alfalfa a day, but not "a couple flakes." The problem for me is that I can't even feed a pound of alfalfa a day, but I would like to supplement calcium just a tiny bit.

Fat is also important. Mel has a good post about the nutrition/fat talk at the convention. I can do a one-paragraph summary of alfalfa, but I'm having a hard time summarizing fat metabolism without misrepresenting it. Let's just skip the why and assume that distance riders should be feeding fat before a ride, then omitting it on ride day. Like BP, it takes a while for the horse to be able to properly utilize the feed, so you gradually ramp it up over a couple of months.

Endurance riders who feed fat (and not everyone does) often use rice bran OR liquid oil (vegetable oil, corn oil, peanut oil, etc.) top-dressed on soaked beet pulp. The problem with feeding rice bran is that the calcium/phosphorus ratio is naturally extremely inverted - so rice bran pellet manufacturers "fix" that by heavily supplementing calcium to bring the ratio back. But the pellets have a high % of calcium then.

Maybe that's what I need? I'd like the alfalfa benefits (increased calcium plasma concentrations) without the drawbacks (high protein, miserably itchy sunburn-y horse). If I start feeding pelleted rice bran, working up to maybe a pound a day, I'll get some of the fat-burning metabolic benefits, and some of the calcium benefits.

Errata:
So I made a scrapbook of sorts for Dixie. It's a scrapbook only in the technical sense of the term - a purple binder, with photos glued in it - but there's no glitter or doo-dads. Here, look:


Anyway, I went back through my blog and got all the distances, times, finishes, etc., and I realized I actually do top-ten LD's, all the time. The 6th place at Rides of March was just surprising because I actually got an award. Rides don't usually give out top-ten prizes for LDs. So I guess it's "Squee I won a thing!" rather than "Squee I top-tenned!" I'm still squee about it.

And it's not like we're very fast on LDs, it's just that not many people deliberately/exclusively ride LDs out here. Some regions have hard-core LD racers, and tons of people entered in the LD, but not so much in Nevada.

My running muscles are very very sore, but my riding muscles and my joints are A-ok today. I gotta get my shit together and as soon as I get un-sore, go out and slowly jog like a half a mile or something and get MYSELF fitted up to run a bit and help Dixie. My dad was like "you have a perfectly good horse, why the hell did you get off it and run down a hill?!" and the answer is that it's almost more comfortable for me to run down hill than to ride down hill, PLUS my horse noticeably recovers better if she's only hauling herself along.

My warranty-replacement Kindle is on the way and should be here Wednesday and not a moment too soon. I had a physical book laying around, and I've read most of it, and while I'm enjoying the story I am just outdone with the method of delivery. It's so awkward to hold a paperback open! And if I just let it shut it doesn't automatically open to the page I was on! I feel like a savage 20th century human. I got the oil changed in the truck today and I had to read (gasp!) a women's magazine in the waiting room and that suuuucked. Trendy kitchens are all ugly and bleak and modernist. Yuck.

ROM 30: Wrongs and rights

What went wrong:

• My Kindle is dead.  Little horizontal and vertical black lines that won't go away.  SO SAD!  At least I got the extended warranty on it.
• My trailer leaks.  At the "rafters," too.  It hardly matters out here but I wonder if I should seal it somehow before I move to the rainy coast.
• My trailer is cold.  To be expected.
• My air mattress failed me.  I knew last summer it had a slow leak, but over the winter it turned into a big one.  I blew it up three times overnight and still ended up sleeping on the egg crate alone after a couple hours.  I was so mad I threw it away as I left camp.
• Dixie's lead rope froze to her halter, and I didn't bring the spare rope halter.  I did have a spare halter, yes, but it's a wide nylon halter - my bridle snaps wouldn't have gone around it.  I ended up tying the frozen rope to a carabiner and snapping that to my saddle.  At lunch it had thawed enough to take off, finally.
• My feet went numb from cold, then my feet went numb from the caged stirrups.  It was my first ride in the less-padded caged stirrups, but not my longest ride in the barefoot shoes, so I blame the stirrups.  MAD FACE.
• When I'm very cold, I skip the Bodyglide, which is suboptimal.  Ow.
• Do not feed alfalfa to Dixie YOU IDIOT.  That poor horse was so itchy.  She's fine today - the pink around her eye/muzzle has gone, and her eye isn't weeping anymore.  

What went right:

• NO INJURIES!
• The hi-tie worked perfectly.  Dixie had plenty of room to pace irritably in a big circle all night.  
• The layers of bedding worked!  Air mattress, egg crate, busted-zipper sleeping bag, then real sleeping bag = no cold seeping up from below.
• I drank almost enough during the ride.  I still really like my electrolytes.
• The new Renegades performed well!  The footing wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great.  One rear pastern strap came loose, but the boot stayed on til camp and once I refastened it, everything stayed put.
• The hay bag iced over and froze shut.  ARGH.  I'd left it in the bed of the truck.
• The long trailer panels do not fit in the bed of the truck.  Major error.  Measure twice cut once inclues measuring where you're going to store things.  I thought it was a 6' bed; it's 5'6".  The two long panels will prop up in the back of the tack room, at least.
• Dixie shook her right rein off the bit?!  See above, re itchy horse.  She did the full-body shake many times, and at the last water stop on the first loop she shook so hard the right rein went flying off.  Sigh.
• Carrots in the saddlebag are adequate substitutes for grass on trail.  The secret to gut sounds isn't keeping the horse's stomach full - almost impossible to do that and make the minimum time requirements - it's keeping the horse's stomach working.  A couple of carrots at every water stop and every gate gave her A gut sounds all day.
• Fresh gloves and socks at the vet check is A+++
• Horse electrolytes:  I bought a tub of Enduramax electrolytes at the convention, and I like them.  They taste less intensely salty than what I'd been using.  I mixed quarter-doses with applesauce and started giving them the night before, and kept it up all day.  She drank about 7-8 liters overnight, drank lightly on the first loop, and drank really well on the second loop.  

Rides of March 30: We done good.

Yep, the weather was about as bad as they predicted on Friday night. I was mostly dry, and mostly warm enough to sleep most of the night (thanks in no small part to Cersei - I wished I had two dogs!) At 5 am I gave up on sleep and made coffee, then climbed in the truck and cranked the heater on full-blast high heat and sat in there for a solid hour. At that point I felt ready to face the 26 degree day.

I got Dixie booted and tacked up before the 50s left at 7 - she gets super antsy when "everybody" abandons her, and it's best to be done by that point. Threw her purple waterproof blanket on top of everything and she looked oddly like a camel. At 7:45, I put Cers in the truck and hopped on Dixie for a nice long warmup. She wanted to trot; I asked her to walk, she walked like a pro. I took her cautiously down the ridecamp road and she did a Bambi on ice, so I knew to watch out for the footing. The wind, rain, and snow last night actually managed to freeze the first couple inches of the ground.

We were walking toward the gate when the RM called the trail open. I looked around and nobody looked really hotshoe ready to bolt for the lead, so... we walked out first. I kept her at a loose-rein walk for another quarter of a mile, then started asking for a trot on the good footing and a walk on the treacherous bits. I kept waiting for somebody to pass me... and waiting... and waiting. We hit the first water tank, four miles down the trail, before the next group caught us. I waited while all the horses decided not to drink, then one of the riders hopped off to fix a stirrup and I asked if it was cool if I left, and we headed out briskly again. I knew they'd catch me again, and just a mile or so later they were back.

The guy in the lead sounded really familiar. Dixie fell in pretty well with their horses. She just doesn't pace well with Arabs. Her medium "go all day" speed is always 8-9 mph, no matter what gait she uses, and her walk is bigger than most Arabs' walk, so we trot a bit faster and walk a bit faster, but we walk more often so we get passed. This was the two-track section of trail that goes up the hill past the big water tank and the bigger railroad oil tanker, so our speeds weren't a problem. We fell in talking and leapfrogging, with me on the right track and the group of three on the left track.

Eventually I realized they're the group from Susanville who sometimes ride with A, the woman I rode the Arabs with last summer. They realized who I was, and we had a laugh about it. Everybody knows me at first glance at rides because I'm the one on the big spotted TWH - but they'd never seen me on my horse. And they couldn't see my face, because I had on a ski mask and a hat. I stuck with them for the rest of the loop, and we plugged along at exactly the average speed I wanted to go - around 5.6 mph.

The first loop of the 30 (second loop of the 50) starts off with 5 miles of easy rolling hills that goes off in a weird direction, sort of like it's an afterthought, then there's a very big loop that winds along a couple of hills, tops one, then plunges down toward Lynn's place. The trail usually goes through her yard and along her property down by the river, for some guaranteed nice grazing, but we skipped that this year! The weather was just too shitty to bother. Instead of going onto Lynn's property, we hung a left at the fenceline and took a singletrack up a long canyon, then cut over into Dead Horse Canyon and on up to the plateau where ridecamp is.

Dead Horse Canyon: Used to contain a dead horse, then the bones of a dead horse, but now even the bones are gone. I think they should rename it to Country Directions Canyon, because it's so very "Ok, you just take the highway down past where the Wethers' farm was and turn left where the school used to be."

Anyway, the climb up the canyon is one of the two Big Climbs I think about when I think about ROM. In 2010 Dixie was drag-ass tired by the time we got up that canyon, but she perked up with some food and rest at the vet check and we finished. In 2011, we were trying the 50, so we'd already gone almost 30 too-fast miles when we started that climb, and she bonked hard. Everybody disappeared and she was sure she'd be the next Dead Horse to inhabit the place, and I ended up getting off and hiking with her to get her to the top. So yeah, I'd spent many hours training hills this year, and I'd watched my speed really carefully, and I picked my companions carefully, and I was still nervous going into it.

Dixie did fine. She was slower than the rest - they can trot where she has to walk still - but she didn't run out of gas. We got to the water tanks at the top and she actually drank a bit, then I grouped back up with Susanville and we trotted briskly off. It was a two-track again, and I was in the back row, and we were all yakking away, and right about the time I started to wonder why I hadn't seen any ribbons lately we hit an intersection and realized we'd missed a turn. We turned around and saw the frontrunners for the 50 headed off down a different trail, so we had to backtrack about a quarter mile to the tank and get back on the right trail. Not too bad as far as missed trail goes - and yes, there were SEVEN ribbons indicating the turn we missed. We took turns blaming each other as we trotted on into camp. :)

I fed Dixie not one but two flakes of 40/60 alfalfa/grass hay yesterday, because she chows it down so good and I wanted her to have a full stomach. And because it's not summer, so she's got a lot of hair, so she can't get very sunburned, right? Well. She didn't burn; she itched. Normally Dixie permits me to scratch her eyes and ears when they're covered in sweat, but she never begs me to scratch her, or rubs up against me. She was scratching her face - on her legs, on immovable objects, on Funders - by the time she got off the trailer at ridecamp, and her bald-side eye was just dripping gross mucous. Poor, poor horse. Anyway, there's nothing but super-rich beautiful leafy green alfalfa at the vet check, so I bypassed the line and headed for the trailer.

(taking pictures required taking off my gloves and I was rarely willing to do THAT.)


In a few minutes, I headed over to the vet check and vetted through with all A's and a 53 CRI. I was absolutely delighted. I'd been electrolyting religiously (not heavily, but she'd had four quarter-doses by that point), I'd been feeding her carrots at every single stop in lieu of grazing, and I felt like I had done a good job pacing us. All A's made me feel like I was in fact on the right track!

I goofed around feeding the horse and the Funder and playing with the dog til my break was over. I didn't see the Susanville gang, and I was a few minutes "late" heading out, so I assumed they were already gone. I headed over to the out timer at the same time as Argh Dammit Why Can't I Remember Her Name. (She knows mine, we know a bunch of stuff about each other and our horses, hell I even kinda remember her face, but for the life of me I can't remember her name.) Anyway, we headed out together, paced very well, and stuck together for the second loop.

Argh rides a super cute uppity bay Arab mare. She's always in heat and she gets infuriated if Dixie gets too close or (gasp!) passes her, but she prefers to trot at about 7 mph so Dixie passed her quite often. The second loop (last loop for 50s) goes out across the plateau, then starts up the other Big Climb then down a small hill, then up a bigger hill, about four times. Eventually you fetch up at the top of a stunningly beautiful canyon that drops 900' in about a mile and a quarter.

I got off and ran it. HORRIBLE MISTAKE, SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TOP. I know that Dixie does recover quite well on long downhills without my weight jouncing around on her. I know that I can run a mile downhill. I was pretty sure that I could run a mile downhill at a ride, with people passing me. I kind of forgot about the arctic clothing I was wearing - let me tell you, three shirts a hoodie and a ski jacket, plus a ski mask and a helmet, gets unfuckingbelievably hot when you're trying to run down a mile of deep sand hill. Argh was patient beyond words and didn't ditch me for either of the two slightly-faster groups who passed us, and I managed to get all the way down the hill without having a heart attack.

There were no very large rocks at the bottom, but Dixie patiently lined up at a bank on the side of the road and stood very still while I flung myself on her, grabbed neck to keep from flipping over her onto my head, and got my stirrups back. Then we were OFF again - the last 8 miles or so is mostly flat or slight uphill. We ripped along a cow trail to a trough, where both horses drank really well (21 miles and she drinks like she means it!), then hit the sand road. Argh's mare was totally infuriated with this ginormous unnatural beast following her and insisted on a slow canter, and Dixie just went balling through all her gaits at about 10 mph. Big trot, rack, pace, canter, repeat. Argh was going about 10.5 mph so she kept sloooooowly drawing ahead of us, and Dixie was working hard but she felt like she had enough go to keep going, so I let her. We hit the five-mile crossroads water tank, slurped up more water (yay drink mare drink!!), and rolled on into camp.

Argh has a HRM and her mare was cruising at 120 bpm, so she didn't even slow down when camp came into view. I knew that Dixie was working harder, and I'd decided that we'd walk in once we saw the trailers, so I made her walk. Biggest fight of the day, and nicest running walk - it didn't help her heart rate, but I won the fight. I caught up when Argh got off to walk the last quarter mile in, and we walked in together. Argh pulsed in immediately and Dixie came down in about 2 minutes.

I took her to the trailer, stripped her tack and got her to eat a bit, then with my heart in my throat we headed for the vet. I let her walk shoulder-to-shoulder with me and I swear to God she took one funny step in that 100 yards and I was sure she was lame. I had her trot a few steps, then walk again, and she didn't do it again... but I wasn't sure.

And we vetted out with... a B for impulsion, A's for everything else, CRI of 52 - LOWER than at lunch. (I will link you something about CRI in the next post; lower is better.) Cool tight legs. I picked up my t-shirt and went to pack up. Dixie was furious that I kept dragging her away from the piles of glorious alfalfa, back to the trailer with its stupid grass hay.

My Susanville friends came in about that point. Somehow they'd started behind me and never quite caught up the whole time. Sigh, oh well!

I stopped on the way out to throw away my trash, and saw the RM walking around, and went to tell her THANK YOU for such a fun ride. She said, "Did you get your Top 10 prize?" and I was all "Whaaaaat we never top 10!" She assured me that yes we did and I walked over to the prize table yelling "We are the champions!"

We finished in sixth place (out of 15-20 LD riders), in about five hours, and I got a purple hoofpick and free shipping from Action Rider. WOOHOO! I also got another purple ROM t-shirt for completing, and an engraved purple carabiner for the 10-year anniversary of the ride. A victory for the best color - and for the best horse.

I am so happy with/for my mare. This shit is not easy for her, and it's a big learning curve for me, and we're rocking along, noticeably improving. I'm getting all teary-eyed thinking about it.

Next post: all the stuff that went wrong. And pictures that don't fit with this too-long ride story.

What have I done

Howling 40-50 mph winds and the rain just started. About 30 intrepid fools at the ride meeting. Horse is double blanketed, dog is snug on her camping bed, I drank a lot of bourbon and am pretty snug in my nest. Wind should quit by morning and all will be well. When I checked in they asked if I wanted to bump to 50. I laughed and said 7 hours of this was plenty of fun for me. 3G comes and goes so I'll post this now. Mugwump may drink scotch. Whiskey, scotch, or bourbon all allowed at the cremation wake. Victorious post tomorrow I hope!

Well Horse Thrush Off

tl;dr: I think it's working. Try it.

So after my new boot fitting with Mel's Boot Service last weekend, I decided to really commit to getting Dixie's heels down. I've been coasting on the "bad DC's from shoes and pads so young" excuse for too long without really trying to help her get low heels. Dixie's got a little thrush in the lateral sides of her front frogs, so I went to the local feed store to look for ... something.

Rant: I know yall are going to tell me "White Lightning!" or some other hard-to-find non-copper remedy, but the most irritating thing in the world* to me is paying marked-up shipping charges. Please, small business owners, roll the handling costs into the product price and charge me SHIPPING AND A BOX to get it to me. I don't mind looking at where you're located, and where I'm located, and paying a bit more because I'm on the other side of the country. I *do* mind paying, like, $8 for a tiny box. Charge an extra $4 for the product and $4 for shipping and you've got my business. I will pay $24 plus $4 shipping way faster than I'll pay $20 plus $8 shipping.

*First-world problems, I know right :rolleyes:

Anyway, yall are going to say "White Lightning!" but everywhere I've found that sells WL wants like $8 shipping.

So to the local feed store! They had the usual Coppertox-type treatments, with big dire warning labels that say WEAR GLOVES. DO NOT BREATHE FUMES. CAUSES CANCER IN CALIFORNIA. CAUSES HAIR LOSS ON CONTACT. And they had this Well Horse brand Thrush Off stuff.

I stared at the Thrush Off for a long time. It had won some award from one of the horse magazines for "best natural thrush remedy." The disclaimer (best natural) was a little :-/ but ehhh, yknow, if I was cool with unnatural remedies I'd already own Coppertox, right? So I took it up to the ladies up front and they said they'd heard good things about it, so I bought it.

Also it's about the same shade of purple as my shiny new halter, and you know me, I'm a magpie for purple.

The directions say to clean out the frog with a hoof knife, then scrub the stuff in with a toothbrush. I settled for picking her fronts out really well with a pick, holding her feet up where the soles were level, and dumping in a lot of purple liquid. I scrubbed a bit with a toothbrush, yes, but the main thrush I'm worried about is deeper than my toothbrush bristles and way deeper than I'd ever cut with a knife.

Two days later I picked them out well again and poured in more purple stuff. Then I read the directions - apply once a week. Oh well.

Today I picked them out really well and I think it's helping. I used to hit squishy stuff, deep in the lateral sides of her frogs, and occasionally she'd flinch. Today I didn't. I think her frog crevices are still deeper than I'd like, but there's definitely a bit of improvement.

I'd really like to trim before the ride, but there's not much to do right now. There's about a millimeter of growth on the lateral (out-sides) of her hooves. I might go to town on it tomorrow, but there's not a lot to do there.

Today's weather: Overcast and 60. Tomorrow's forecast: HORRIBLE.

Friday Night

Overcast with snow and rain. Low of 27F. Winds from the SW at 10 to 15 mph with gusts to 50 mph. Chance of snow 100% with accumulations up to 3 in. possible.

Don't care. Going anyway. Hope we don't die. If we do, please cremate us on the marge of Lake LeBarge. With a wake, with bourbon. Party of the century.

New clothes, spa day, dance practice

Yes, all the above refers to my horse.

Dixie got a new halter!


Mrs. Mom has started making Horse Paracord Stuff, in exciting colors, and I immediately signed up for a halter. I turned her loose in the backyard and got a couple of good shots (and a bunch of blurry nose pics).



It's big enough for her TWH head! I think she'll have full range of motion with her jaws, so she can comfortably eat with it on. And it is beautifully blue and purple, with nice padding on the crown and nose. Really lovely quality work. There's a tiny blue "button" on the tie end, not big enough to interfere with tying it, that I didn't take a picture of :(

And she sent me a bracelet!


It's pretty comfy as a bracelet, but I might clip it on the saddle if I feel that I need it somewhere. And the neat thing about paracord is that if I really needed some cord for some emergency, I could unravel the bracelet and have like a mile of cord.

Then - AFTER taking pictures, because I'm not too bright - I broke out the new magical shedding block and made a Dixie blizzard.


And it's Wednesday, so we went down to the street to drag the trash bin back to the house. I did a short trot-out on the road, just to make sure she hadn't forgotten how, and she trotted perfectly with no carrots or sticks.

Dixie hasn't done a trot-out in 9 months. The last time was the heartbreaking "please trot so the vet can see how lame you are" in June. :-/ But she looks great, she feels great, her attitude's great, and I'm excited to go ride Saturday.