2011 Ride Season Recap

I suppose a poor ride season must come into every horse and rider team's life. I can't say our season was a total disaster, but it was certainly a disappointment. We had an awful lot go wrong in a single year!

At our very first ride of the 2011 ride year, day one of Death Valley Encounter, Hoss was pulled with a cramp. I decided not to ride him on day two, and rode again on day three. Not fifteen miles into the ride I noticed he was lame on the hind. It felt like either his foot or his hock. Couldn't be sure which. We finished the ride on "walking orders," and while we were allowed a completion, by the next morning it was evident Hoss had strained his left hock. He spent the next two weeks in a corral.

We got back in to the groove after two weeks off. Hoss hadn't lost much condition due to his confinement. I had pulled his shoes after he had strained his hock in hopes of slowing him down. It didn't work. Because he wasn't slowed by being barefoot, I decided to experiment and see if I couldn't get him barefoot. I decided to give it a year before I would make the final decision whether to use boots or shoes.

And then there was the shoulder surgery. I had to have my left rotator cuff fixed. It turned out to be a complicated affair and I was in a sling for six weeks. During the time I was out, my daughter rode Hoss, just to keep him moving and the dogs exercised. She was only riding him around home. She didn't have time to take him anywhere else. They had a rather nasty fall right before I got out of the sling and was able to go back to riding.

This is where things started to fall apart. We had finished one day of Death Valley Encounter and three days of Eastern Mojave, so we had 200 miles when I had hoped to have 250 by that point. Indeed, if he hadn't come home from Death Valley lame, we might have gone to Warner Springs the next week, and adding all those miles we could have been at 400 miles by that point. 500 was our goal.

I rode Hoss as often as possible without boots, trying to get his feet toughened up. I noticed he tripped, mainly on his right front, but it was easy to write it off to sore footedness. So I kept riding. I started using his front boots.

As the Descanso endurance ride approached, I noticed Hoss would be off, then fine. He was very inconsistent. I nailed on shoes and pads and hoped for the best. During the ride, he would be fine on consistent footing, but would be very slightly off when the footing got uneven. At the third vet check, we were pulled. He was lame.

Hoss went to the vet for a lameness exam. After running through all the tests, from flexion tests all the way through x-rays, we found nothing definitive. All we could say for certain was it was somewhere in the front 2/3 of his foot, from an inch above the hairline down. Hoss was put on six weeks confinement and anti-inflammatories for six weeks.

After coming out of confinement, Hoss was a bit pent up, but he'd lost some condition and it showed. We went next to the Big Bear ride. Hoss had trouble keeping up a pace better than 5mph. We wound up pulling, largely because I was experiencing some rather significant – and yet undiagnosed – gut pain. Also, we didn't have time to finish if Hoss wasn't going to go any faster or recover any better.

We went to Best of Both in October and finished with just 15 minutes left on the clock. Hoss had a hard time coming down at every vet check. It took him right up to the last moment we had – there were cut-off times – before he would get down to 56 beats per minute. Still, we finished. I hoped we had turned the corner.

At the end of October, I decided we'd go to Moab Canyons in Utah. The description sounded like the ride would be easy enough, and it would get us closer to our goal than going to the closer ride in Ridgecrest on the same weekend. We finished all three days of Moab. Hoss came down to criteria – by this point I had purchased and started using a heart rate monitor – quickly, but in the mountain region, criteria of less than 64 is virtually unheard of. Watching the HRM, I found he was doing better each day. On the second day, he looked pretty tired at the vet check, but my sense was he'd be okay, and I was right. I babied him through the end of the second day, and on the third day he did fine. Except when he slid down the sandstone hill and took me out, giving me a badly bruised and sprained hip, which still isn't healed.

There was one last ride available to us before the year was over. If we could finish 75 at Lead Follow, we would have 480 miles, and get close to our goal. It was a last-ditch attempt to get some miles. Unfortunately we got lost and ended up over time. So no credit for those miles. We ended our season with 405 miles.

What I can say is Hoss has turned the corner and is doing much better on his heart rates. I noticed at Lead Follow he was coming down to the set criteria – 60 – almost immediately upon coming in to the vet check. At the trailer, while eating, his heart rate would drop into the 40s.

During much of the season, I was nailing shoes on Hoss's hind feet for competition. I had one heck of a time finding boots that would work. I finally settled on the Easyboot Edges, and used them all four days at Moab. They stayed on, but he beat the hell out of his back fetlocks with them. He also tore up the gaiters pretty good. The gaiters did a pretty nasty number on his hind pasterns, too. He came home with nasty rubs. So, as far as I was concerned, the Edges, at least on the hind, were a bust. Before Lead Follow, I bought a pair of Renegades for his hinds, and he wore them with no issues -- except he wore them out in a single 75 mile ride. It turned out they were just a bit too small, and just as if you nail shoes on a horse that are too small they are apt to wear out early, the same evidently applies to boots. He now has a pair of size 2 Renegades for his hinds and they seem to be holding up just fine.

Next season is already looking up.