Bluebonnet

First of all, apologies to my readers as well as to ANDI for leaving her hanging on a bad training day. She is coming along nicely and I'll get caught up with her posts shortly.


In other news, What a fabulous time we had at the Bluebonnet ride this year. Due to "life" (and such), I hadn't been able to attend an endurance ride in about 14 months, and, as they say, that's too long.

It sure was great to be back in the saddle and back on the trail. GWAIHIR had an excellent ride his last time out (not counting the rider option pull last April due to the weather and his wimpy rider) with a 1st in our division and a 3rd overall on the tough Hill Country trail.

Saturday, he never missed a beat. Other than being a little more overly ambitious than usual, I couldn't tell he'd been out of the game for so long. He ate and drank better than ever and, as always, was eager for the trail. We had a great finish, I haven't seen the official results yet, but I think in the top 20.

If I read the photographers captions correctly, these photos are at about 47 miles. I love having happy horses at that distance.


Courtney rode ELBERTH (Beri), a smarter ride, letting us run, she slowed down for an easy day, just missing turtle by a couple of riders.

Beri finishing another 50 is a real success story for us as she tied up at the Bandera ride last year. We researched all our options and treated and brought her back conservatively.

We looked at everything, exercise, conditioning and fitness level, nutrition and even her heat cycle. I'd changed feeds and so I changed back. Over the course of the next weeks and months, we did a course of selenium and a very slow, structured work schedule, a period of rest and then a repeat of the very gradually increasing work, bringing her up to a regular riding schedule.

And it paid off. She's been doing light trail work and arena work, including winning the AHA OEIP National Mounted Shooting Championship for 2009, but this was her first long distance ride since her tie-up.

I couldn't resist adding this one. We're racing no one for ... I figured 30th place ... turned out to be in the top 20.... but I just love to let them run across the finish line. It feels good to have that much horse left. I didn't know Jim Edmondson (the photographer) was there, but got excited when I saw him get out his camera. I thought I'd get a real good photo of GWAIHIR extended and working, I love those with the nostrils flared and all that going on...

*sigh* It's a fun shot, but the son-of-a-gun doesn't even look like he's breathing hard. I love having that much horse, but he's going to have to work a little harder next time out so I can get one of those dramatic finish line photos that I love.

Freezing N' Burning

Well. I'm back. I woke up this morning with so many ideas, I couldn't handle them all. But first, I have to talk about our fantastic weekend.

We started three horses and finished two.

The weekend turned colder than we had expected and so we were only marginally prepared. We should have known better and it was a lesson that wasn't as hard as it could have been, knowing Texas in February. This ride has, in the past, seen ice storms on Friday with beautiful warm sunshine on Saturday. So we shouldn't have been surprised, this year, when we got cold, windy and cloudy instead of sunshine.

Abelino jumped into endurance with both feet and started a 50 his first time out -- and did great. Beri (ELBERETH TOS) is a well-seasoned endurance horse, but she still gets a little race-brain. He handled all her early morning antics and her late-ride doldrums and finished in fine form.

Beri has enough miles now that she really settles into the work and the miles and when you're doing a moderate pace, she can seem a little sleepy or tired. When that started happening, we kicked them into a high gallop and 'played hard' for ten or so miles.

To me, it's the height of the sport when you have enough horse to play and really enjoy the day.

I'm glad to be back on GWAIHIR. He's a handful of horse, but it's a joy to ride one who is still fresh at the end of the day. He has amazing gaits, especially his canter. He has a little rocking lope that's so easy to sit he spoils me for riding anyone else. He's done a handful of Limited Distance rides over the last few years while I was riding with my younger son, but those days are behind us and he's ready for a lot more miles. I'm dangerously enthusiastic about getting him to a lot of rides this year.

Courtney and GLAMDRING had an unfortunate pull between 55-60 miles. She had a ton of horse left, he has the fitness level, but not (YET!) the emotional maturity to be on the trail alone in the dark in spitting rain and pending storms. Courtney made the tough (smart) decision to bring him (and herself) safely back to camp rather than ask him to do something he isn't ready for. It was a tough lesson for all of us -- but we know where his 'holes' are and what he needs to be working on ... and it's all do-able. It just needs to be done. And it will be, hopefully in time for the 100 in April.

Thar's Horses in them thar woods.... or not?

This is a question that comes up surprisingly often.

The answer is .... 'it depends'.

And it depends on a lot of things. Horses are grazers, different than browsers like deer, or even donkeys. In addition to the nutrition (calories and vitamins and stuff), they need the long stemmed grasses in order for their guts to function properly.

Can they live without grass or hay (such as in the woods)? Sure. For while. Some horses will be very picky about what they eat, but most would put a goat to shame before they starved to death. They would start to eat odd plants, anything leafy, bark, sticks, even the old layer of detritus on the forest floor (one of my mares ate a mosquito dunk today (and she is decidedly not starving)) - and if they didn't get impacted, colic and die from that -- they would eventually be dealing with the consequences of long term malnutrition.

But depending on the climate, your woods may have lovely meadows. Easily enough to support a horse or two for a short period of time. And another meadow down the way. But not a herd of horses.

Also consider, if you're writing a horse that's been in the woods for a long time, it's likely to have life-long issues stemming from that experience. Anything from degenerative joint disease, if it was a young foal, if the woods-horse was a mare carrying a foal, or with a very young foal at her side, the foal could lack of integrity in it's soft tissues, ligaments and tendons, poorly laid down cartilage and even some amount of malformation of the delicate bones in the knees and hocks. These things could cause the young horse a lot of pain as he matures, especially when he comes of riding age and is put to work.

An older horse could have internal issues, anything from something as simple as a stick lodged in their mouth that festers, to internal damage that contributes to recurrent colic.

He may have developed a taste for toxic weeds if he managed to eat enough in the woods to keep him alive, but not so much it killed him.

And it's more than just nutrition: A horse's most basic self-preservations instincts are compromised in the woods. They are herd animals who find safety and security in numbers (and remember a real herd can't live in most woodland areas, so they'll be searching for other horses.)

Their eye-sight is designed for the open ranges. They see short distances with their heads down and long distances when their heads are raised. Aside from their keen sense of hearing, their eyes are their early warning system. But you can't see very far in the woods.

Their first line of defense is to run. And they can't run as fast in the woods, not if they're looking for a way through and having to zig-zag, dodging trees. So most horses, simply wouldn't stay in the woods. If they were chased into the woods, or abandoned there, they would travel, snatching what they could along the way, maybe stopping for a few hours at a creek or a meadow, but then they would move along - looking for food, but more dramatically, looking for safety. Although there are always exceptions. We had a local case of a horse that had been abused, rescued and (mostly) rehabilitated, getting loose and running to hide in the woods, and no, he didn't survive.

If a fully tacked horse gets loose from a rider, there is additional danger of the reins, or even the saddle, getting tangled in vines and holding the horse in place until he dies of dehydration. Another main consideration is that the horse may eventually have tack galls that fester.

But one of the main things authors need to remember is that it's not really natural for horses to be in the woods, that there needs to be a good reason for the horse to be there -- the worldbuilding has to be solid enough that the reader sees what the horse is going through trying to find enough forage -- and there needs to be appropriate consequences for the length of time the horse was in there.

The Last Hoorah Endurance ride

We (me, GWAIHIR, GLAMDRING and Lucy) had a wonderful ride this weekend. It was especially fun for me because it's a trail that I help put in years (and years!) ago and have ridden a lot, but I've always managed the competitions there and so this was the first year for me that I got to compete over those trails. - and I loved every minute of it.

I took off work Friday and the youngest son went to camp with me and help out with the horses. He's a great camper - he loves to set up camp and cook and just hang out. I saddled up and rode each for the horses for about an hour and even though I knew they were going to be excitable the next morning, I thought we'd have a pretty good start.



One of the funny things about horses is how they almost seem to have a collective energy - and so morning camp at an endurance can be a pretty exciting place.



We lunged ours for a few minutes before we got on - and then just walk walk walked around, being nice and quiet. We let the front runners go when they opened trail, and we stayed back until most of the pack had rounded the first turn in the trail and then walked out. We walked for awhile and once the horses settled, we picked up a trot and jogged and loped the rest of the day. This is a wonderful fun trail, but somewhat technical and it's difficult to do fast.



I knew the horses weren't conditioned to do a fast ride, especially in the tricky combination of rock and slick mud we rode through, so we started out with the plan to ride back of the pack and stuck with it all day.

The first loop was 15 miles with a 'trot by' where the vet quickly checks the horse, then another ten miles. So we did the first half of the ride in about four hours, and the second half in about the same so I'm pleased with our pacing. Eight hours is a good, solid back of the pack pace that gives you a full day riding without getting too long. The horses looked good at the end, not too tired - and they both had good vet scores.



I'm having a little trouble with GWAIHIR, I think it's related to his blind spot. (he has a corneal scar from an injury that clouds the front half of his field of vision on the right side). He wants to travel crooked, with his head tilted so he can see more forward with his left eye and while it's not hard to correct him, it takes a lot of consistency on the part of the rider. I have a bad knee and ankle on that side that aches when I get tired and exacerbates his crookedness. He stepped on his heel bulb and cut himself (all on the right side) and he was sore in the back on that side. See how the issues cascade?



This could be an excellent issue to use to escalate conflict for a western or fantasy hero that I've never seen used. We're going to go back to doing more dressage type exercises in the arena to try to keep his muscling even and go from there.

Freeze R Burn '08

Anyone who's been reading along for very long knows I'm always up to take someone for a ride. There would be no way to count the number of people I've mentored before or through their first endurance rides, but it's something that will never get old for me. And not just that first ride, but in seeing them come along over the years.

Over the last months, Sonya Cassella has been riding with me and last weekend was her endurance début. Her ride story and photos are here: "Don't Walk" and also (for your viewing pleasure) is the BeriCam and the GlamCam! Actual movie footage of an endurance ride.

You'll notice toward the end of the BeriCam the sideskip away from the sniper in the woods. Of course, I didn't see the sniper, but BERI assures me there might have been a sniper and her argument that we are, all of us, safe, sound and unsnipered, is irrefutable. Unfortunately.

I do have to admit that because I didn't see the sniper doesn't mean he wasn't there.

BERI has a fair number of miles by now and while she can still be pretty strong at the start, she knows her job. It's a real joy and satisfying to see these young horses growing up, going down the trail and doing so well.

It has been a long haul for me, but considering breeding and raising horses is a lifelong commitment I know that only ten years into it, I still have the rest of my life to go. And I'm absolutely looking forward to it.

BERI and GLAMDRING are paternal siblings and they had another sister there as well, ZUZU, ridden by a Junior rider, also in the 25. GLAMDRING had a third sister, Eowyn, on his dam's side who finished 2nd in the 75 mile competition in great shape. For these guys to be doing so well, and so obviously loving what they do - to me, that means that I'm doing something right. That all the agonizing over pedigrees and photos and the hours of watching horses move in the pastures - that has all been worthwhile and it makes me even more excited about the young horses still in my pasture and the little dream-horses scribbled in my notebook.

GLAMDRING did his first ride last fall, at the Road Warrior, so the Freeze R Burn was only his second time out. He handled it like a real trooper, moving easily down the trail, eating and drinking like an old pro. This photo is from the fall ride at about 45 miles. It was a hot day for November but we were glad for it.

- couldn't resist!

I couldn't resist posting a couple more pictures of the boy and his mare. I can only hope that generous readers will indulge this proud mom. These were taken on a private ranch outside of Beorne, Texas that graciously allows a couple of AERC endurance competitions each year.

but this last photo - taken during our rest stop at the half-way point - brought up a question that gets the occasional *head scratch* and/or *snicker* from me during a movie or an otherwise good book. "Isn't CIMMI a *black* mare?" they asked, pointing to the odd colored shoulder that shows in this photo.

The answer is: yes. She's black, but what a lot of people don't realize is that black horses fade. Some don't, but most do. They bleach in the sun and turn different odd shades of not-black. Most will develop large orange patches on their shoulders, hips and barrel. CIMMI fades to a sort of tanish, goldish shade of bay. To keep a black horse black, they have to be blanketed or kept indoors during the day. Movie horses are dyed if they need it. Sad but true.

So when a hero rides up on a shiny black, I figure he's been holed up somewhere and might be out of practice. I'd love to see the occasional wandering hero mounted on a scruffy orange, weathered and road-worn horse.