I was starting to feel better by day four, and really had hope to have licked the whole cold into bronchitis thing. I kept taking the medications I'd been relying on to keep me going, knowing I had a good chance of relapse if I didn't.
I got Hoss his breakfast and got us ready and our crew bag to the trailer. We headed out for the start. I figured we'd either meet up with Echo and Rocky or we wouldn't.
We did end up meeting up with Echo and Rocky pretty early on. Hoss spotted them right away and lagged until they caught on up to us.
So we had our typical day with Echo. Echo and Rocky got ahead of us and we spent most of the day following. Which is fine, really. Especially when we got to the tunnel under the highway, made of corrugated pipe. Hoss probably wouldn't have gone through the evil Tunnel of Doom had Echo not gone through first!
We wound through some single track pine forest and along the edge of canyons. It was a warm day, and I ran through quite a lot of fluids before we made it to the vet check.
The vet check was in an area known as Cow Camp. Once we'd pulsed down, I found our crew bag and got Hoss set up. There was a lot of deadfall around, and I lightly secured Hoss's lead to a fallen tree. It's not that he really needs to be tied off, just that I'll always tie him if I can.
Once I finished my lunch, I took my water bottles over to fill them up. While there, I was chatting with Alyssa (our vet) and Ann. We were chatting away when Hoss pulled just hard enough to break the branch he was tied to. He stared suspiciously at it, and I turned to Alyssa and Ann and said,
"I have to go back to Hoss; he's freaking out." Of course, Hoss's brand of freaking out looks like nothing. Another rider asked if Hoss could teach her horse to "freak out" like that.
After I got Hoss situated, he was wanting to graze and walk around rather than eat his hay. I accommodated him to a certain extent, but really didn't let him range far. There was plenty of grass so he didn't need to go far to get good grazing.
Then, he decided he wanted to roll. I've never told Hoss he couldn't roll, but the saddle was on, so I couldn't let him go down. I jerked the saddle off as quickly as I could, and he laid down for a good roll.
What happened next was more than a little frightening. Once down, Hoss did his typical rub up and down with his neck, and then laid completely still on his side on the ground. Never have I seen him do that. After a tense minute or so, I called Alyssa (who was watching, just as concerned as me, from the trailer) and she came over to check things out. Once Hoss saw the vet, he decided he'd better get up. He arose and shook, just like he normally would after a normal rolling. Alyssa checked him over carefully and pronounced him fine.
Once up, we realized he had laid down on a tree branch. Most likely it prevented him from rolling properly, so he just decided to lay there and have a snit about it.
I got the saddle back on and vetted Hoss through. I packed up our bag and we hit the trail once again with Echo and Rocky.
After the laying down incident, I was understandably worried about Hoss. I was concerned he wasn't going along so much because he was feeling good, but because he was being "pulled" by Echo. So I was relieved when an opportunity arose to separate from the other horses and see what he'd do on his own.
Another rider had lost a hind shoe but lacked a boot to act as a spare tire. Cheri had one in her packs of a suitable size to help out. So she and Helen stopped the help the other rider. I explained I'd like to see how Hoss was doing by getting him out by himself for awhile and we headed off on our own.
Hoss would really have preferred to wait, but he continued on with little urging. After a time, he decided this wasn't the worst set of circumstances in the world and picked up an easy trot. Once he'd done that, and kept it up, I felt a whole lot better about him.
It didn't take terribly long for Cheri and Helen to catch back up to us, as expected. We continued on, making our way through the open area, and Cheri realized we had gotten off course. Had I been alone, I would probably have followed the ribbons, still up from another day, and gotten us pretty thoroughly lost. Cheri realized we'd missed a turn, and knew where we should be in relation to where we were.
We hit off cross country. In due course we could see the road we should have been on, but there was a problem. There was a fence between us and it. However, as we got closer, it became clear the barbed wire was not hanging on the posts, and we were able to find a spot where it was buried sufficiently for the horses to safely step over it.
Coming into camp, we came down the new trail into the back side of camp. We finished in good time. Alyssa looked Hoss over with extra care, and pronounced him healthy. I told her he had gone alone for a time cheerfully enough and had been grazing greedily. I was satisfied he was okay, and so was she.
Here's the link to our video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My2VGbecOWI
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