Hi, Terry,
Here my wife and I, me on Walt, are two thirds done with our fifty
mile one day ride this past October at GMHA in South Woodstock. Walt
was the only SB horse in the ride. It seemed most hard core riders
were on Arabs.
We had been getting the horses and ourselves ready
since June. The big problem was, we live in the Champlain Valley,
it is kind of flat around here. Woodstock on the other hand is
incredibly hilly, short but very steep hills and the trail system goes
over every one that they can. So Walt and my wife's horse, Triumph,
we got so they could go all day but we had to get them in shape for
hill climbing. We trucked them over to GMHA every weekend we could but
still didn't feel they were ready, to go fifty miles and do all those
hills. So truck them to the Green Mountains almost every weekend in
August.
I would have to say they were just barely ready for the ride
but they did it all. We weren't the quickest by any stretch but we
weren't last either. It seemed many of the horses and riders, this is
all they do!!! Go from one long distance endurance ride to the next
one up and down the east coast. If you know about endurance rides then
you will know all this already, but the horses are vetted in the day
before the ride and then we had four vet checks during the ride. So
the horses have to be in good shape to be allowed to keep going and Walt
passed each one with flying colors!!!
It turns out that one of the big problems with endurance riding for
the horses is something to do with the gut and so they check for gut
sounds and a few horses were not allowed to go on because of a lack of
gut sounds but Walt had such loud gut noises that the Vet could hear
them without her stethoscope.
We started our ride that morning at 7:00
and finished at 5:00, and if you take out the mandatory vet check
times we were riding for just about eight hours. Around forty horses
and riders started, we don't know how many finished. This was our
first experience with riding over at GMHA and meeting and dealing with
the people over in that area of the state, all of the money is over
there. People showed up in fancy rigs pulling even fancier horse
trailers. We are talking BMW SUVs pulling Fifty thousand dollar
trailers and then to watch many of them try and unload and then reload
their horses, well needless to say some things you just can't buy and
knowing how to handle a horse on and off a trailer seemed way beyond
many of these folks abilities. So it was always fun for me and my wife
to pull up in our work truck with a rusty old trailer, but of course
with a solid floor, and have the horse walk right on with out a fuss.
Well this is probably way more information than you had wanted to have
to read, all in all Walt was a delight to have and continues to be and
we are hoping this year to do the one day fifty plus a three day
hundred miler. Will keep you informed.
Chris Zeoli
