Karen’s Musings & Endurance Ride Stuff

This cartoon is great.  So many endurance riders are experts and finding excuses for whatever is wrong with their horse. It can’t ever be their fault that something is wrong with their horse.

I admit to looking at things a quite a bit differently than others.  First things first.  When I have a pull on a ride I consider that to be a failure.  Actually, the problem or failure is in the fact that something is wrong that necessitates the pull.  Pulling in itself isn’t the problem, it’s having a reason to need to pull that I consider the problem.

If I pull and don’t finish a ride, I consider that to be a failure.  What’s wrong with admitting that?  We can’t all be successful every time out.  If we aren’t willing to admit to failing or making mistakes we won’t learn from them.

I don’t start any ride thinking *maybe* I’ll finish.  Each ride I start I do so believing that I can do it, and that my horse can do it.

I also don’t always look at success or failure of a ride based upon whether or not I completed a ride.  What matters is the condition of the horse post ride.

For example:  Earlier this year my horse Bo fell with me on ice and that eventually led to a strained ligament.  It was a relatively minor injury.

Bo had completed every ride I entered him in.  He never had to recheck with any vet on any ride.  After finishing one ride I gave Bo a bath and longed him in a circle both directions and he looked perfectly sound – had many witnesses that could attest to that.  Then, a few hours later when I went to walk Bo, he was limping.  It didn’t really matter that he’d completed the ride, it was still a failure to me because my horse was ‘not okay’.  I don’t mind being critical of myself in that way because if I can’t accept that something is wrong and look at what or why it happened I can’t take steps to keep it from happening again in the future.

Another example from this year was when I pulled Chief at the High Desert ride.  It’d sure be easy to blame ride management.  “There wasn’t enough water on the trail”.  How many times have we heard riders saying that?  I’ve heard riders say their horse tied up because there wasn’t enough water.  Are you sure it had nothing to do with how you rode your horse?  Why didn’t the other 127 horses on the ride have a problem?

Anyway, back to my example and what I learned from it.  I was riding Chief conservatively, we’d gone 35 miles in 7 hours so were averaging about 5 mph.  This is about average speed for him, maybe a little slower than he’s gone on some rides actually.  The problem developed I believe because Chief drank a LOT of alkaline water on the trail.  There wasn’t a lot of good horse drinking water on the trail.  Chief’s done lots of rides with water spots being few and far between, in much more challenging terrain and weather.  I made two big mistakes.

1)  I shouldn’t have let him drink that much alkaline water from puddles.

2)  I should have been paying closer attention to his well-care.  It turned out that even though his teeth were checked in December – by April, he had points that had caused open sores on the inside of his mouth.  I think this contributed to the alkaline crud irritating those raw tissues.

What did I learn?  Be more careful about puddle drinking.  I’ll still let Chief drink from puddles but will pay more attention to how much.  He was drinking way too much, more than he would have if the water had been ‘good’.  It was like once he started he couldn’t stop.

I also learned to put my hands in my horses mouth far back at least once a month and feel for any points.  I should have also clued in on the fact that Chief was being really difficult in his kimberwicke all of a sudden, in a way that he isn’t normally.

Most importantly, I learned that just because my horse has a low pulse (which Chief did throughout his ordeal), it doesn’t mean squat.  This is the only time I’ve ever felt that I had a horse that could be in real trouble.  Initially, the vet couldn’t find anything wrong with Chief–he passed all the vet check parameters.  I knew something was wrong initially just by looking at the expression in Chief’s eye and that’s all I needed.  Here is my report from that ride.

It would be so easy to blame bad luck or @#$% happens or some other reason for various things happening.  Yet, if I look at all of the reasons my horses have had over the years for not finishing a ride it’s hard to do that honestly and not be able to accept that in almost every single case it was the fault of the rider (ME!).

If I can’t look at it that way, then I can’t take steps to keep those same things from happening again.  I can’t blame my horse or chalk it up to bad luck if I know that same horse has done a lot of rides without having that happen.  That isn’t to say that accidents don’t happen.  I think in the case of my pulls if I had the ride to do over again I would be able to finish if given the opportunity to start over that particular day and do it again.  If I didn’t think that way I would probably give up and just figure that the universe was out to get me and no matter what I did I wouldn’t be successful.

If my horse is wired and not paying attention because he wants to “go-go-go” and in the process comes up sore or trips and falls whose fault is that?  Really – it’s mine, because I put the horse in that situation and I should know that I’m riding a very large animal with a very small brain and need to take charge and diffuse the situation so that it’s safe for us to go down the trail in a way that won’t result in an injury.

Over the years I have spent a lot of time learning from others that are successful in the sport of endurance riding.  Riders who are consistent with finishing and keeping their horses sound long term and going mile after mile through many seasons are great to learn from.  On the flip side of that, I think I’ve learned even more from riders who aren’t doing that.  It’s pretty simple to see what somebody is doing right and emulate them, but I’ve found it even easier to see riders who are consistently having problems and learn from them as well.

I think one of the most important lessons that I’ve learned is that just because my horse has passed the final vet exam, it doesn’t mean that my job is over looking after my horse.  I have seen at least two horses later die that passed a final vet exam.  in one case, the horse probably would have survived had the owner gotten veterinary treatment/attention earlier.  In another couple of cases I’ve seen horses that by the time they received a best condition award at the ride meeting that evening – were hooked up to IV’s.  Horse looked great an hour post ride, but then deteriorated.

It’s very important to keep a close eye on your horse post ride.  Usually after I’ve gotten the tack off and the horse has been relaxing and eating for ten or fifteen minutes I like to check their pulse rate.  My horses should by that point be down in the 40’s.

If a horses pulse is up in the 60’s or higher 30 to 45 minutes after finishing (or rather, getting back to the trailer and having tack pulled)  then that should be a red flag something might be wrong and I’d want to keep a close eye on that horse and/or have a vet look at the horse again.

Being a multiday rider I also don’t usually breath a sigh of relief just because we passed our final vet exam at the end of the ride.  What really matters to me is that my horse is still sound and fit to continue two hours later, six hours later, the next day, etc.  That’s when I knew I really blew it with Bo earlier this year.  I’ve been making an effort to trot him in circles a couple of hours and the next day after each ride he’s done since recovering from his injury.  I don’t want to make that mistake again.  Minor stuff can turn quite serious.  I learned an important lesson.  In 24,000 miles this was the only suspensory ligament strain I’ve had.  I had gotten too complacent.

If you look back at your last pull, or maybe one last year or the year before – can you think of something you might have done differently to have avoided the pull?  Ridden slower?  Ridden solo, maybe not slower as much as at a speed your horse was more comfortable going at?  Maybe you should have given your horse more time off between rides?  Done more homework/conditioning/preparation prior to the ride?

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