Think I'll just combine all my posting into one post so my darned name won't be on here every other post. :-)
Just back from Pyramid Challenge at Kentucky Horse Park. WHAT A BLAST!!! I am going to tell the end of the story first so to lend credence to my advice.(whether deserved or not) It was hot...humid...LOTS of metabolic pulls in the 25...more lameness in 50...we finished 6th in the 50, 2nd in BC judging, and high vet score! :-D We had such a great time. We just got home and my kids are in total mourning that it's over and just sulking around the house saying, "I wish we could rewind to Friday, I can't believe we have to wait till next year to go again" The Pyramid Society is a group that breeds Egyptian Arabians. They hold a huge show at Kentucky Horse Park with Dressage in one part of the park, and the big breed show in the big covered arena. This year the endurance camp was in the infield of the steeplechase track in a beautiful grove of HUGE shade trees (about 5 feet diameter trunks). In the distance you could watch the Saluki dog show running it's "Coursing" (racing after a fake rabbit) event, hear a bluegrass festival going on, announcers for the jumping horse show on the hill, and the CONSTANT hum of golf carts whizzing to and fro. but there we were in our own private grove of trees sort of segregated from all the activity unless we wanted to join it. It was going to be hot and muggy but that's usually good for me. My horse is a little thick to be a good heat horse but I think hot rides favor truely paranoid riders and I qualify doubly there so we usually do well. As for electrolytes: I do not dose at all at home. None leading up to the ride. I try to keep them happy about what they're eating. I know *I* don't want to start drinking extra on Wednesday for a Saturday ride. The only change I make is cutting the grain in half and mixing their feed with wet beet pulp the feeding before we leave to make sure they're tanked up on the trailer. He gets his first dose the night before the ride, with a syringe mixed with yogurt. I stick the end of the syringe in the side of his mouth, but then sort of pry the mouth open and aim it straight for the back of the throat. Make sure there's no hay or anything in their mouth first and it goes to the back of the throat and I don't see it again. I like the consistancy of the yogurt, it shoots way back and sticks. When I've mixed with water it ends up all around his lips and coming back out. Now for the chiro thread. I've always had a fear of chiros. Won't go to one myself. Never planned to take my horse to one. But...for a few years vets have been commenting that my horse *maybe* looked a little off...sometimes during the ride and not at the end. Sometimes grade one at the end. Always assumed that the mileage was catching up with him and a joint was getting stiff. I spent tons putting him on Adequan, then he's had Legend shots, a joint injection, lots of different shoeing...not one thing made a difference. VERY frustrating, and I was getting self concious and just generally sick & tired of worrying about what they'd see in the vet check. Then, this winter I hauled him all the way to Lexington to the chiro that my endurance friends use up there. She took one look at him, said his hip needed adjusted. Gave him a hard bump on the rear, then put her hands inside his leg and gave a little twist. My thoughts were, "that's all?" Well...he's now done 4 straight rides, not one vet has seen one thing. I feel like I've got my horse back. He used to get high vet score pretty often. This was the first time in at least 2 years and he got straight 9's from a vet who says he doesn't give 10's. I am happy, happy, happy, happy, happy! I had run out of my home made electrolytes and since I had a bucket of each Enduro-Lytes and Perform'n Win that I'd won decided I'd use them. Really saw no difference at all in his drinking or eating from how he does with my home made mixture. I used Enduro-Lytes the night before and at the first 2 vet checks simply because I could mix them up the night before with yogurt and with 2 horses didn't have enough syringes for the other stuff. I decided I'd use the Perform'n Win at the vet check since I'd heard that when you mix it with water it gets kinda thick and you wouldn't need a mixer. I knew it was too hot for the yogurt without the cooler so I figured that would be good. As it turned out, I must have gotten it too thin. It was watery and I felt like a lot of it came back out his mouth. I took a dose with me in a baggie for the 3rd loop with a syringe and figured I'd mix it with water on the trail. I dumped it in the barrel, tried to get some water in and shake it up. It liquified on that end but not on the rest. Everyone else is getting their horse sponged and I'm shooting in a little watery mixture, then hitting dry powder & clogging, then trying to add water again. It was a pain and I think he spit a lot of it out. I'm sure carrying it in an old Lyte now syringe might be better, but I don't plan to spend the $$ that cost when mine work fine for pennies. If anybody wants to save me some old empty tubes I'll take'em. :-) As far as seeing any change in my horse's eating or drinking habits from when he gets home made, I didn't see any change. The most difficult part of this ride is staying on course. There are so many distractions, and the course just cuts across open fields, around soccer fields, and crisscrosses everywhere. Since the markers aren't necessarily always on your right (picture tiny flags on metal sticks going through the middle of a crosscountry course) you couldn't tell if you were going on it forward or backwards. Quite a few people found themselves coming into camp when they shouldn't be there. I managed to take a wrong turn when we came up on a plate with the sun shining through from the other side making it look as if the arrow was on my side...of course there were pink markers both directions. Debi Ivey figured it out and we turned back. Note: Hey Sites, she's your "Morissette with the great legs person" She's remarried. I told her your were talking about her legs on ridecamp and she said she wasn't surprised you remembered them...since you two had a cartwheel turning contest at the Race of Champions and you beat her! >g< Unfortunately, my daughter Josie got her first pull here. Her horse passed his vet check, but leaving at 25 miles she felt he was a little off and had the vet re-check him. It was slight but she chose to pull which was good and I was proud she made that decision. I think there were 60 in the 50 miler. 1st was Michelle Owens on Tommy Tiktin's big Egyptian gelding. 2nd...someone from NC? 3rd. & 4th Sandy and Samantha Thompson, 5th Debi Ivey on Vali HiFayzera (21 years old!) 6th Kaboot & Me, 7th Charlotte...(rides for Melissa Crain) on Jasper, 8th? Teresa Mascaro. I'm sorry, don't remember next two. BC went to Sandy Thompson on her daughter's mare. Runner up BC...and the person who will assume the duties of BC should Sandy not be able to fullfill them...ME! (always the bridesmaid, never the bride) Didn't know the winner of the 25, but ridecamp's new grandpa Ed Roley won BC and his daughter was reserve BC! Hard luck award...Roxanne Cicconne who lost her horse early on, got him back hours later, and went back out and finished. One thing I really enjoyed about this ride was that there seemed to be quite a few people who were new to the sport and really enthusiastic. My favorite was a lady who was there last year to show her Saluki's and kept wishing she had her horse there. This year she brought her Appaloosa and you've never seen anyone more proud of their 25 mile completion. At the end of each loop on the ride you had to make one circuit of the 1 mile crosscountry track and the Saluki breed show where she was well known was on the far side of the track. When she was making her final lap they announced it over the loudspeaker in the breed ring and they all cheered for their own. :-) It was good to relive how good those early completions felt. The evening of the ride was also the "Grand Finale" of the Egyptian Event horse show. Horses whose pedigrees had been certified as having sufficient Egyptian blood were invited to be presented in the Arena. There were 16 endurance horses who qualified. I was really proud of our guys. They looked good, the horses looked great and they did us proud. The crowd was very appreciative of them. I later spoke to one of the people from the Pyramid Society who had been a spotter for our ride. He kept telling me how impressed he was with the sport...how fit and healthy our horses were, and the bond we had. He said next year his wife wants to enter. This was a really positive chance to show our sport off. The evening before the ride I had met up with a lady on a jumper out for a ride and she had a lot of questions. She was very nice and seemed to have a good impression of our sport too. :-)) After the endurance horses left it was time to bring in all the champions of champions with spotlights, screaming, and anything else that would make a horse run in circles and freak. Actually, they looked a lot like Kaboot at his pre-ride trot out so I couldn't talk. >g< After they announced the Grand Champions they invited the crowd to come out in the arena and look them over. It was hard to tell about their topline to some extent because they carry a lot of fat over their backs. You could have set a place setting of dishes on their backs without them sliding off. :-P Their legs looked rather delicate...but they have them shaved to surgical level and I wondered if they'd have looked a little bigger with some hair on them. Recon if they'd given me one of them I'd have been willing to take a shot at making something out of him. >g< Finally the evening ended with parties...several parties...all around music drifting over the hills. My 16 year old went to the Hunter Pavillion with the other camp teens (oh did they have fun with the golf carts all weekend!) and when I drifted over there at midnight or so the endurance riders were still enduring...dancing the night away. They had a DJ, smoke, flashing lights, and everyone was just having a ball. Didn't get to bed till 2 AM...22 hours and all of it fun. :-)) I highly recommend this ride for a family weekend. Next year I think we'll try to go up a day early. Angie ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
