Mustang Saga

I think endurance may well be my horse's forte. But not in Easyboots, maybe. We did 37.5 miles, probably about a third of it totally barefoot, and he was still rarin' to go. Not at all sweaty (some of the horses were covered head to foot in sweat). We had to come back after two days of riding because the boots were rubbing his heels. I'm going to look up fixes for that soon and I may go back for the last few days of the ride. They didn't get to the point where they were bleeding but after another day they would have been, and it hurt already, I could tell when I pulled the boot off. I recommend you shoe and pad your horse for the John Wayne ride. If you don't like shoes take them off as soon as you're done. It's rough, very rough footing for the most part. Fooling with boots has not been fun. But if you're used to fooling with boots and you know exactly how to apply them to keep them from rubbing during the long haul, go for it. I think it is possible, just a pain and requiring a LOT of close attention to keep your horse from getting hurt. What I'm looking at doing is covering his entire foot in Vetrap and then putting duct tape over the area that's rubbing. Huge PITA and probably not cheap on the Vetrap. Maybe not even worth it.

Anywhoo - Here are all the pics I took. Not many, but then I thought I still had a week's worth of pictures to take. And really, the trail all looked pretty much the same.

I love this picture of my shining horse and his glowing heart.

Waiting - Day One

The way the ride works - in the morning you tie or leave your horse with someone, and you drive your rig forward in a big caravan to the next camp. Then everyone runs and gets on the bus to get back to their horse and get riding. At the end of the day your camper and trailer are waiting for you. But the horse handler has to stand in the cold wind while the driver is doing all that. :) There aren't a lot of places to tie your horse.

On the trail:

This coyote ran along next to and a little in front of us for quite a ways before heading out into the sagebrush.

Day two - Waiting

Yay - the bus is back!

Heading out:

Tonka was very worried about this particular wagon with it's very jingly harness:

A closer look:

Culverts going under Hwy 395
(I got down and walked - Tonka has a fear of culverts, even the tiny ones, so I wasn't about to ride through here.)

The view

On the trail behind two wagons:

And that's all I took.

We did see snakes but no rattlers. The people were nice. I had fun, but really the trail did get a little boring, all the same all day. I was looking at the hills wishing I could just go climb a couple. It was really refreshing to get off to the side and zigzag through the sagebrush after I realized my boots were rubbing. I asked the guys riding drag if it was okay to get off trail and they said it was fine, especially if it's for the well-being of the horse. I had to watch VERY carefully for wire, holes, and snakes. We stepped in some big holes even so, but no wire or snakes.

My riding partner was really understanding about me taking off and leaving her alone. I felt bad. I almost bit the bullet and had one of the farriers there put shoes on him, but I just really can't be spending that kind of money after buying the Easyboots and everything else for the trip. Maybe next year.