The 2010 AERC ride season starts…..tomorrow!

That means it is time to renew your yearly AERC membership if you haven’t done so already.  It’s easy to do online.  Go to the aerc.org website.  From the left hand side of the website look for a dropdown menu with the title “Membership”; select that and then drop down to “Join/Renew Membership”.  From there, select “renew”.  You’ll then need to log in with your AERC membership number, last name and entering the name of one of the top three most famous endurance rides in the US.

If you aren’t already a member of AERC but might be interested in joining, AERC has a new members resource page.  Endurance riding is so much fun, isn’t it time you got addicted to something really healthy AND fun?

It’s always exciting to start a new ride season and make plans for the horses for the upcoming year.  The last year went pretty well all things considered.  We hit a few bumps in the road.  In the spring Chief and I had a scary day at the April High Desert ride when he got a tummy ache.  Fortunately it never got very serious but was still terrifying since it was the first time he’s ever had a bad day on a ride like that.

Soon after that, Bo fell on ice and strained a front leg which ended up getting him two and a half months off during the summer and the perfect excuse to get out of going to the Tevis (smart horse, eh?).  Tho the time “off” was not really off since during Bo’s rehab I had worked him up to 50+ miles a week – riding him barefoot which turned out to be the best thing for his feet ever.  I think I goofed up when I left boots glued on the horses feet for three weeks – can you say DUMB?!?

The next and biggest bump in the road happened a couple of weeks after I did all 5 days of the Fort Schellbourne ride on Chief.  He was trying to get to green grass in the pasture through the fence and hit the hotwire, somehow managing to catch his eyelid on the fence hot-wire insulator and ripped his eyelid all apart.  That’s been an ongoing problem due to the scar tissue that formed.  Chief had to have another surgery over the weekend and is currently in stitches.  He’s been through a lot and has been a super patient the entire time.  Even after all of the minor surgeries, getting cut open, stuck with needs, etc. he still lets me put ointment into his eye without needing to put a halter on him.

In spite of all of those ups and downs that I had with my horses we still managed to have a lot of really good up and downs – on the beautiful trails that we enjoy sharing together.  I always do appreciate every single ride though encountering a little adversity sure makes you learn to not take anything for granted.  At any moment at any time, something serious could go wrong.  Ultimately we ended up very far on the positive side of happy things happening in 2009.  Chief made Gold Medal XP for the 3rd time, 9,000 career miles and also placed in the West region and National Mileage standings.  Bo made it past his first 1,000 miles and has completed 7 rides after his injury without any signs of a problem and is also in the West region standings.  He also finished up the last two 50′s of the year mostly riding entirely barefoot.  What a fantastic ride that was!

I completed two one day 100′s – 20 Mule Team on Bo, and the Virginia City 100 on Tigger.  I liked doing the 100′s and would do more if they didn’t conflict with multidays.

I can’t wait to see what 2010 has in store!  I’m not sure what my goals are going to be other than to take things one ride at a time.  My first priority with Bo is going to be to see if I can progress with getting him out of a running martingale.

On a fun note – I generated a Tweet Cloud out of the last year of my Twitter tweets.  The top three words….1) ride  2)  endurance  3)  horse.  Ride endurance horse!!   Go figure!  http://w33.us/2i5y To follow me on Twitter, click here, or do a search for endurancerider.

What do other people have for goals for next season?  For the horse?  Rider?