Getting My Ducks in a Row - Fergus

Fergus

In reality, I haven't actually got this duck in a row yet, but I'm working on it. Up until now there hasn't been any real hurry because Fergus has been on break since February (a product of having too many horses to ride, rather than not wanting to ride him), so like many things around here, it has been on the back-burner. Given that I hope to start him up in 100 milers again next year, I need to get the problem sorted out.

* * *

Unbeknownst to me, Fergus developed a couple of rubs either side of his withers during Tevis last year. At Foresthill, my vigilant crew distracted me ("look! Elephant!") while applying Desitin, and off I went again, blissfully unaware.

Keeping in mind I can't actually see Fergus' back from the ground, it wasn't until pre-Virginia City 100 prep six weeks later during the washing/primping/obsessing phase that I noticed that he had scurfy callouses on his withers and Crysta admitted "oh yeah, he got those at Tevis and we deliberately didn't tell you about them". This is what crew is for - to prevent you from obsessing over which you cannot do anything about.

The day before Virginia City 100, 2012. You can see his newly-minted wither callouses

I put his pad on and felt around underneath and concluded that in my efforts to protect his back and pad his Skito appropriately, I'd probably overstuffed the pad and it was causing bulges right about where he didn't need them. So the pad got destuffed and off we went and did VC100. No back soreness, no obvious rubbing.

Fast forward to 20 mule Team 100 in February - Mr Mild Manners became an overachieving GIANT HORSE and proceeded to move out as BIG as I've ever felt him move before. He rubbed the cr*p out of my legs in the first 12 miles (trying vainly to keep him to a subdued dull roar) and I knew that if he didn't calm down, my crippled body wasn't going to get close to finishing the next 82 miles. Luckily he did calm down and returned to his normal self, but not before skinning the insides of my legs.

What extra-special-BIG movement can do for you - the insides of my legs 50 miles into 20 Mule Team.
If it did this to my legs, what might it be doing to his back?.

Again, he finished with no back soreness or obvious holes, but the callouses were definitely still there. Come summer time, his fluffy winter coat shed out and, voila, two large white patches either side of his withers, a rear left-hand white patch, as well as some "frosting" either side of his spine. Not what I wanted to see.

Photo taken standing on the hay pile above him:

• Pretty sure the wither spots are my fault from overstuffing the pad and two-pointing a good deal. 
• Think that the patch in the left-rear was from when pft was still riding unbalanced from his broken leg. Now that he's more balanced and lost 20 lbs, think that problem has been remedied. 
• The frosting along the spine - not sure, but wondering if it's heat-related from him building up friction from his BIG movement?

So I concluded that although I've been using Skito pads almost my entire endurance career, apparently it wasn't cutting it for Fergus and it was time for a change.

From looking at his back, I don't believe he's suffering from a 'saddle poking' issue - I don't see any atrophy of back muscles:

Curiously, the area that is "frosted" also has raised hair along it.
I didn't notice this until I was taking these photos.

Another problem is because his back is so long and there's SO MUCH real estate available, my saddle tends to slide back off the raised part of his withers onto the flat part of his back, causing the front of it to sit too low and tilt me forwards slightly (I don't have this problem using the same saddle with either Roo or Uno - where the saddle sits closer to their raised withers). So whatever pad we end up using, it needs to be able to be shimmed at the front to raise up the front of the saddle.

Instead of sharing a pad with the other horses, it looks like Fergus will have a special one of his very own.

Using Sensation treeless saddles, it made sense to go to the source, so I emailed Kate in the office and sent her some explanatory photos. She suggested either replacing the foam padding in the Skito, especially if it was more than three years old (...er, that would be a "yes"...); or getting one of their new endurance pads made with Eco-Gold padding ("Ultimate impact protection with a combination of shock-absorbing technology; Reduced friction, rubbing and pressure points" - yup, that would be what I'm looking for).

Since I'd like to try something different for Fergus—particularly with a view to the idea that his big movement may be causing some heat friction—the Sensation endurance pad is the route I'm going to take.

(as an aside, another thing she mentioned was the temperature sensitivity of the foam used in Skitos - that it tends to become "mushy" and loses some of its support when riding in heat. I'm thinking that if I like the Eco-Gold padding, it may be that I replace all the foam in my existing Skitos (in need of overhaul) with this kind of foam).

(and as another aside, Christoph Schork used one of these pads during Tevis this year and said he really liked how cooling it was).

Today I emailed Kate at Sensation to set the ball rolling so that Cinderella will be set up ready for Fall Training (if we ever get organised enough to start such a thing)(right now I have three horses lined up in my head for "Fall Training", so we'll see).

Getting My Ducks in a Row - Uno

Uno

Quite how Uno's feet degenerated into their current mess is distressing to me. He's always been a "bar" overachiever, but his feet got away from me without me realising that they had. During his last trim less than two weeks ago, it dawned on me that nearly the entire back of his front feet was now bar material ("bar pooling") and the seat of the corns had vanished underneath it. His feet were solid blocks of dense material. No concavity. No sole shedding. Just blobs of hard stuff.

My problem is that he grows a lot of toe, but very little heel, so it's a balancing act to try and not take anything off the back, while keeping the front under control. As a result, he tends towards spatula feet at the best of times.

I don't like to get too aggressive with sole trimming - which is probably also part of the problem - I suddenly realised it had all built up and it was time to get serious about getting it back under control. Not pretty.

Yesterday morning I put his front feet in boots and filled them with water (... and then went and fetched a third boot when I noticed the water trickling out of a hole in the toe of the boot). I topped up the water again last night when I fed.

So he wore his water boots for 24 hours and this morning I set to doing a hack-job on his feet. It's scary digging around in there like that, and I imagine he'll be a little footsore until things even out, but I think I got the job done. Sorta.

(Note I took the following photos with my iPhone so there may be some distortion due to it being close up. I know his heels aren't super-healthy, but don't believe they are quite that contracted.)

Left front, post-hack job. Talk about dubbed toe. :(

Right front, post-hack job. Not quite as extreme...

I don't love these feet, but need to avoid his toes getting long to protect his suspensories from over stretch

(Yellow outlines show the area of bar that I removed) The soaking in boots actually made it possible for me to peel the bar material away, sliver by sliver with my hoof knife. Towards the end it got harder and harder to tell what was bar material and what wasn't. I suspect I could have taken more off, but chickened out.

He had what appeared to be slight bruising either side of his frog near the front. 

I also spent some time opening up the central sulci (in his case, deep slits) to let air in and get No Thrush powder down in there. And did the same with the space between heels and frog.

Left heel: example of what happens when Uno decides to wriggle at the exactly the wrong moment as I'm nipping. The good thing is, even though this was only two weeks ago, by the end of this morning's trim, the rest of the heel had been rasped down to match the missing part (see next photo).

Towards the end of the trim, after I'd liberally powdered his feet, I noticed a black crack near the front of the frog on the right. Gentle poking with the hoof pick cause it to chunk off, so I got busy pulling off sole and revealed quite a bit of new sole on that right side. Like I said, normally I wouldn't touch this stuff - just let it come out on its own, but clearly in Uno's case, his dry, rock-like feet had opted to retain everything, resulting in flat, solid feet.

So the hour and 15 mins spent chiselling away at his two front feet seems to have been relatively successful. Certainly he wasn't lame at the walk and didn't show any discomfort while I was performing the hack-job. I'm hoping that the lessening of bar material will cause his feet to be able to flex more and in turn be healthier. And if I can eliminate the thrush in his heels, hopefully he'll start to land heel-first and grow more heel.

I may repeat this soaking again in a week and see if more sole material seems inclined to come off.

And if I can find somewhere non-smoky to ride this weekend, I'd like to take him out and see how he feels - hopefully more willing to move out once I get boots on.

Getting My Ducks in a Row - Hopi

Hopi

In the last few weeks, Hopi started to look a bit funky - he's not thin exactly, but his hip bones were poking out, ribs peeked through, and his top line started looking very prominent. In addition, the hair on his rump got peculiarly tufty.

To complete the picture, he seems to be having an all-out war with "someone" (thinking Small Thing) and is covered in scuffs and bite marks. He's not bottom of the pecking (biting?) order - that spot is reserved for Uno who just wants the quiet life - and Hopi and Small Thing regularly eat together, so it doesn't appear to be that he's being chased off the hay. Hum.

The strange thing is, during this time he has become the most relaxed and cheerful I've ever seen him. He's talkative, friendly, and plays a lot.

Hopi's Tufty Butt:

After eyeing him for a while, I concluded maybe he needed a worm purge, so duly purchased 1,000 ml of fenbendazole (10% suspension) - enough to purge four horses should I feel the need to do so. Otherwise, enough to treat my five horses for about the next decade.

'Course, as soon as I ordered the stuff, Ann pointed out that I should probably get him a fecal exam to make sure that's what was really going on. She even gave me a kit* to do the deed.

(*Kit = small pill bottle with a pokey spoon attached to the lid. Instructions were "Take some poop off the top of the pile, keep refrigerated".)

Thursday was the day and I set about getting Hopi to poop on command. This used to be a simple matter of looking at him or putting a halter on him. But apparently nowadays that wasn't going to cut it. He ambled along behind me, quite happily, looking around at the world, totally relaxed.

Hopi acting like the highly-strung arabian he is...

Ah hah, I thought, and loaded him in the trailer. 

Most self-respecting horses, at this point, will poop within four seconds of getting in the trailer. Nope. Loaded and unloaded him several times and took advantage of the situation to impress upon him that leaping out of the trailer as soon as the door was opened wasn't appropriate. Manners about jumping out were instilled, but still no poop. 

I ran him up and down a bit. No poop.

Finally realised it was getting late and I needed to get to work, so tied him in the barn with a hay net and ran indoors to get ready. 

Wondering what to do now - to alarm him sufficiently into production,
but not enough that he wonders what he did to deserve such treatment.

Now nice and tidy, but still no poop in the barn, I decided to try and load him one last time and - voila, finally he produced the much desired substance. Put him away and then squatted in the dust in my work clothes with the pill bottle and the pokey scoop and retrieved a sample.

At Auburn Animal Medical Large Animal, I handed over my prize. Apparently if you send your poop sample to the lab, they will charge you around $200 for the privilege of inspecting it under a microscope. Auburn Animal Medical realised the stupidity of this - who's going to test for worms when you can pick up a tube of wormer for less than $10? So they purchased the necessary equipment and now do "fecals" in-house for a mere $25.

And here's the rub. The vet office called that afternoon - Hopi is negative for worms. 

So now what? I should test him again in a few months to make sure they aren't at the encysted stage. But in the meantime, this morning Hopi got stationed in front of a large pan of sloppy feed - Elk Grove Pellets and Ultium feed, with a helping of E-Se-Mag (Vitamin E, Selenium, Magnesium) and we'll try that for a month and see if it helps. And I'm waiting to hear from the vet as to whether I should go ahead and administer a five day fenbendazole purge anyway.

* * *

Edited to add 08.26.13:

Hopi tucking into his enormous pan of goodies. Note offending ribs in the background. He's been gobbling this stuff once a day for ten days now, and I'm not convinced it's done much so think that a worming purge is in his future. However, I'm going to wait until after we get back from vacation so I can supervise in an obsessive manner. 

Dreams (in which I do too much of it)

Despite evidence to the contrary, once I'd made my decision take Fergus (lumpy legs and all) to 20 Mule Team 100, I felt fairly relaxed about it. I was even sleepy and dropped off to sleep quickly at around 10:45 on Friday night. Love that new memory foam mattress.

Two hours later I was wide awake with a churning stomach and a fretting head.

• Had we done enough conditioning?
• Was Fergus going to crash and burn the next day because of the forecasted 72°F? [hah, we froze practically all day - they didn't mention the "brisk" wind in the forecast]
• Were his legs going to drop off?
• Was the fact that I'd not had a chance to do a short pre-ride on Friday going to bite me?
• Would his glue-ons stays on?
• Would I be able to eat properly or would I get lack-of-food-stupid?
• ...

Finally, I slept again and had an interesting and delightful dream about visiting a bat sanctuary and needing to draw pictures of the little bat tails to identify what kind of bat they were. No idea what that was about, but it was a bit of light relief from the fretting.

At 4:30 a.m. the alarm went off, and sadly, I was already awake. It seems that the worst part of doing 100 mile rides isn't the riding, it's the fretting ahead of time and resulting lack of sleep.

* * *

My commute is 600 miles a week and to stay sane I listen to audio books.

A LOT of audio books.

I can either get piles of audio CDs from the library or I can download digital audio files. The latter requires some caution to avoid bumping our internet usage over the monthly 10 GB limit and incurring a $10 overcharge, so CDs are a better option. Except that – of the three cars available to me to commute in – only one has a functioning CD player - and of course, it's the one that gets the highest gas mileage. :(

So the latest "good plan" is to buy a portable CD player that I can use in any of the cars. Yesterday I took a quick look at prices and availability. You can spend $30-$200, and judging by the reviews, it won't make a lick of difference. Most units had over a 100 reviews and half the people said "great unit! great sound! love it!", while the other half said "useless/broke after three minutes/fritzy".

My brain's way of dealing with this was to dream that I went shopping, bought 3-4 items, and when the lady rang me up, the bill was $10,456. And rather than say "uh, never mind", in the dream, I was trying to figure out if we had a bank account with that much money in it that I could use. Turns out the lady had mispositioned the decimal point and the bill was really $104.56 (lucky I'm on top of things and can do maths, right?).

Does this indicate a guilty conscience over spending $30 on a CD player?

Or was it that, in planning my purchase, I realised that I would probably go to the Republic of Walmart to get it - and in doing so might be able to pick up a new white/red-bulbed headlight to replace the one I already have that you have to bang and poke to get the light to stay on?

Big spender, me.

Cripes (in which I gag over hay prices)

For the last few months we've been buying hay from the local feed store in Garden Valley. I say "we" - actually pft has been doing it. It's just a couple of miles down the road, so he can easily nip out, fill up the hay trailer and be back home before he even notices he left.

Unfortunately, the last batch of orchard grass/alfalfa (usually a 90/10 mix) had gone bananas and the ratios were flipped. Of course, the pones thought this was most wondrous and proceeded to gobble the sweeties hay down in large quantities, adding to their already whale-like proportions.

But with Fergus being prepped for 20 Mule Team 100, eating calcium-laced alfalfa wasn't going to fly. An excellent way to develop an unhealthy dose of thumps half-way through the ride when his body tries to resupply and wonders how to do so (apparently the body gets stupid about such things if you provide large amounts of calcium from an outside source and forgets how to make its own).

So on Saturday off we went to Auburn with the truck. We weighed the empty truck, we had them half fill it with fine orchard grass (and it better be fine at $22.99 a 115 lb bale) for the working good pones (Fergus and Jackit), reweighed truck, and then had them finish the load off with "diet hay" (meadow grass at $16.99 a 115 lb bale) for the fatties. With 28 bales on the truck, this is probably the most expensive load of hay I've ever bought.

Yikes.

Back again

In a fit of fickleness (is that even a word?), I'm going to try blogspot again...

Back to Ponyhill.Org

Sorry - if anyone liked this format better - I don't, so I'm going back to Ponyhill.org...

Click Ponyhill.org to get there.

Magnolia/Equestrian Way; Ramping Up for VC100; Camera First Aid

It's no good. I just can't warm to this format. It's supposed to be all easy - everything automated and at your fingertips... but it still seems to cold and impersonal. I have to resist the temptation to just list "things that have happened", which makes for dull reading.

So what has happened? (OK, I couldn't resist).

• pft, Fergus, me n' Uno went on a long ride from Magnolia towards Salmon Falls and back to get in some "long trotting" practice. We took a detour up to Equestrian Way to find a short loop someone had told pft about. We found "a" short loop, but not the one we were actually looking for. However from the GPSed track we were able to look on Google Earth to figure out where we'd been and where we should have gone. So next time we'll be able to cut through the woods, across the (no doubt downed barbed-wire filled) meadow, and accomplish our 'sploring mission.

• Before we rode, I'd hoped to get away with "A quick rasp" on Uno's toes. Not. So an hour later, I'd performed a full trim on him in the parking lot and as I went to nip that last heel, I did it too deep and he ended up with a wonkly, too short heel. Luckily he's growing foot faster than a fast thing right now, so hopefully by the time VC100 rolls around in three weeks (two now, as I write this), he'll have grown it all out again [gulp].
• When we got back from this ride, Uno had somehow scraped a chunk of hair off his fetlock and said leg swelled up like a melon the following day. For the rest of this week he's been getting twice daily icings and I've concluded he's just teasin' with his poorly leg impersonation. I'm not thinking about it. I'm not thinking about it. I'm not thinking about it.
• Uno is now in full "you shall be fed everything good under the sun" mode and gets shut up to eat his Special Fud. Fergus is miffed.
• I am going into obsession-mode about the 100 mile ride and enjoying every minute of it. It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing things in my life.
• Having thought about my crunchy knees (they aren't that crunchy, but get a bit cramped over long distances), I tried out pft's longer-seated Sensation saddle for the above ride. Although it's very close to mine, it still seems worth trying out in more depth - I can shift further back in the seat on downhills and give my knees a break - so last night I spent an hour switching all the bags, covers, stirrups off my saddle and onto his - and vice versa. Pft's only complaint about using my saddle was "all the crap on it". I prefer to call this "essential equipment"; pft couldn't get on or off the saddle with all the stuff on it.
• I mended my camera with SuperGlue. No really. The top fell of the shutter button, revealing tiny wires that bend backwards when you thrust it into the pommel bag. Apparently these cameras aren't designed for this sort of treatment. Wimp cameras. So the "new"one is mended while my "old" camera - the one who's LED display got crunched... possibly when someone rolled while still in his saddle - got sent off to hospital where, for a mere $80, its LED display would be replaced and it would be Good As New. Oh yes!
• I worked another week of ridiculousness at work.
• I didn't get to bed at a sensible time, instead staying up late to do important things like string new blue beads:

• I didn't plant the two remaining lavender plants that have been sitting in the way at the foot of the front steps for about three months.
• I did, however, order Chili some magic pills from SpringTime which are going to turn her into a youngin' again. In theory. And I snipped her toenails twice in a row in the same month. Maybe I'll actually get them under control again? Maybe. Life continues to tick.

Working on the Railroad

The last two days at work I got to animate a powerpoint presentation for the High Speed Train that is being planned for California. Interesting seeing the background as to how they figure out where to route the track. Unfortunately, they wanted about four days work squashed into two, so I didn't get home from the office until 10:30 Friday night - talk about pooped, but at least I don't have to work Saturday.

The plan had been that pft was going to meet me with pones at Cool after work Friday afternoon - so much for that. Instead he went out on his ownsome with Fergus and they had a fun ride ending up coming in under the light of an almost full moon.

Strangely, he reported that Fergus seemed kind of ouchy trotting on the trail - this was puzzling since I knew his feet weren't particularly long - so this morning I went and had a poke around. As best I can work out, Fergus has been growing a nice deep crevice in the central sulcus while I wasn't watching, so he got his frogs hacked up so that they aren't hiding anything they shouldn't and got treated. Hopefully the thrush will clear up quickly.

My other priority today was sleeping - which I managed quite successfully.

This evening we took Roop and Fergus (and Chili) over to Magnolia and did the mini Gerle Creek loop - kept it short and sweet since it was Roop's first proper outing since the spring. We still only went a couple of miles, but it was nice to be back on my real pone doing something other than his standard rehab route up and down the lane. Fergus was still a little ouchy, but happy enough to bop along.

Roop's time off has been good to his belly:

Some time between when pft tacked up on Friday and when he tacked up again this evening, Fergus' curb chain vanished, so on the way home we dropped by Cool and searched for it in the dark... no luck.

pft trying to figure out what happened to Fergus' curb chain:

We live in such a gorgeous place:

Good to be back on the trail on my pone again.

First real trail ride since the spring, even if it was short:

Chili got a baby aspirin when we got home. Have to see how creaky she is, but she seems to be doing good.

Uno Goes to Bridgeport

Uno vetted in with somewhat dehydrated vet scores on Friday afternoon (we got there about 4:30 pm) and I hoped that he'd tank up at the trailer overnight - which unfortunately he didn't, really, despite feeding him multiple slurpies laced with dynamite elytes.

Kaity and I were aiming for a 75 percentile finish and left accordingly at the start, trying to start with the pack - sort of successfully - but not too much to avoid Uno having a melt-down. He was doing fine until two horses came leaping up behind us...a bit more than he needed, but he dealt with it.

Kaity n' me were doing pretty well - passing people and keeping ahead of them and riding in our bubble - both boys doing very well. For reasons unknown, Uno ended up leading a whole bunch of horses going up the long, long climb, and was a slug which was a bit embarrassing - several times I tried to get people to pass, but they didn't want to. Like Roo, he definitely isn't a leader... that, or I need to ride with a crop and *make* him do it?

Coming off the mtn, we got off and ran with the pones the whole way down (Uno did an excellent job here) - or at least until my bad ankle expressed displeasure and then we just walked briskly. While walking, we were caught by a group who passed, but then one of their horses had a small melt-down at a soggy part of the trail and the ensuing drama did nothing to settle Uno down and cause him to feel like drinking. On the lake road a big gaggle of riders came running up behind, passed us in a big commotion - and then went our speed, just in front of us, which also didn't help [grr] - he sure as heck wasn't going to drink for fear of someone rushing up behind him. So he didn't drink, and he didn't drink, and he didn't drink.




Came into lunch at 11 am (and hour earlier than in previous years! which greatly pleased me) and he ate and drank a little at the trailer, but nothing like he should have, so we stayed an extra 15 minutes to give him a bit more time.

After lunch we took it easy, he drank a little at the trough at the bottom of the mtn, but again was too distracted by the 30 milers coming past on their way in. Climbing the mtn took *forever* as usual and was about as much fun as it always is (i.e. not much), but we were in good spirits once we started down - which is when Uno finally started to drink, only 30 miles and 24 hours late.

We passed through the check at 3 pm (first time through we didn't have to stop) and zipped on, not even pausing since we'd stopped on the mtn and let them have a grazing-fest in the good green grass. In the process, we passed the five riders who'd gotten out ahead of us at lunch when we left late, so we were quite proud of ourselves.


Kody set us a great pace going down the long meadow valley and although we stopped to sponge and drink (it was hot) a couple of times, we made great time. Made one small detour following a ribbon that shouldn't have been there into an interesting grove of young aspen that was a bit like a chinese puzzle - lots of crossed logs on the trail and lots of trunks to duck under. Finally decided that wasn't right and reversed out again - only to get passed by three of the riders.

After another grazing/sponging fest at the big creek, Kaity and I hot-footed it out of there ahead of the other three and started back up the valley towards the VC. Unfortunately, Uno was again in front and apparently isn't blessed with a good sense of direction, as he didn't really want to move at more than slug-pace. So Kody again saved the day by going out in front and zipping along.

Back at the VC, we pulsed down quickly and Uno and Kody tucked into a big pans of slurpie and scoffed vigorously. We opted to do vetting towards the end of our 30 min hold and Uno's VC at this point was less than stellar - I suspect his lack of eating/drinking caught up with him and the fact that he was now eating and drinking properly hadn't yet made its appearance in his vet scores. Anyway, I was a little worried about him, although he seemed bright-eyed and happy.

We left for the last leg with 55 minutes to spare and made as good time as we could, while I fretted and tried to go as slowly as we could while still moving out briskly (not possible, but again, Kody did a great job getting us in). In the last half-mile, five riders passed us, one at a canter, which again, totally freaked poor Uno out. And so we finished with 7 minutes to spare - but at least we finished and Uno's final vet scores were pretty good (and he finally deigned to trot out - another thing we need to work on - he has gotten *bad* about bothering to trot out).

Uno had a fine day getting to push Kody around - apparently Kody is his personal slave for all things - rubbing on, sharing food, and planting his face in Kody's tail and flipping his head forwards - big fun, esp. when Kody's just entering into a bog and ends up sliding 2 ft forwards. Uno gets no points for manners and his rider even less for letting him do it, even if it was quite fun to watch.

• Fud with a high-proportion of rice bran in it is good.
• Starting a ride looking like a tub less so, but it probably saved him from going south from lack of drinking.
  
• Kody started the ride looking like...well, Kody - that is to say "well covered" - and he finished the ride looking "well covered" and like he hadn't done anything. :)
  

Kody did an amazing job all day. This was his 2nd 50 and he impressed me no end with his calm behaviour (even if he did pull pissy face the whole time he had to trot next to Nick and Don) and eating and drinking his way around, climbing the hills with cheerfulness and generally setting a great pace all day, towing slug-Uno around. Gold star to Kode.

---

Our booting exploits were also successful...

Uno's two glue-ons amazingly stayed on and still look really solid - although he didn't jump around much or show much sign of high-torquing behaviour. Luckily I checked his Gloves carefully beforehand, tightening screws, etc and discovered that one of the fronts he had worn the previous Sunday had ripped out the back screw. So I replaced that with an old-style gaiter Glove and put on a pastern wrap. At the end, when I took them off, he'd ripped out the back screw in that one too, so I'm not sure what he's doing there. But the boots were all very solid.

Kaity had fancy red glue-on Renegades all around. This makes for *very* easy boot spotting, esp. in creeks where they shine out like beacons. She'd done an interesting thing where she glued the toes on first (these boots are open in the back), then once they were firmly in place, prised the sides down with a screwdriver, inserted the tip of the glue gun in and squirted more glue in to get the sides firmly glued (this meant that there was no danger of getting Adhere down in the sole). Her boots stayed on beautifully all day, although the sides were looking a little worse for wear at the end and gapping a bit.

---

• Took me four hours to get down there, 16.3 gallons, 11 mpg.

• On the way home, it took me 4:45 to get back, 15.4 gallons, 13.9 mpg
  (came home via Lake Tahoe to avoid the jams on 50 through Placerville).

Uno is currently out wandering the property, munching whatever he can find and working out the kinks.

pft and Fergus took the recently-returned trailer and went out to ride Dead Truck and I'm watching him on the SPOT.

---

> How did it go glueing them on?...

I'm all proud of myself (despite the foul language at the time) - I glued Uno's boots on using Adhere (instead of Goober Glue) for the first time and although the first boot didn't go on at all (the glue had set up before I got within 10' of the horse, so all that happened is the beads got pushed to the bottom of the boot and it wouldn't go on).

The second two boots I put on seemed to go relatively smoothly, but despite this, I didn't have the vaguest conviction that I had used enough glue or that they would stay on for longer than 1 mile.

When I came to take the blimin' things off on Sunday evening, I needed two screwdrivers and a small hammer - and some fancy footwork to avoid getting kicked when I prised wrong. Those puppies were on there *solid*.

---

> > Uno goes on hunger strike unless the rice bran appears in copious amounts.

> WOW Uno, really? He knows how to work it!

He is a spoiled brat. A spoiled *tubby* brat.


(although ....I was inspecting Hopi's girth last night and he is even fatter, if that's possible!)

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I am still getting to know him.

This ride put Uno over 500 miles, so I was pleased about that. He's continuing to learn each time we go to a ride, although he seemed to regress a little at this one with regard to his eating/drinking habits. That said, I don't think he spooked at anything, and he only bolted forward a couple of times - but they weren't with the usual warp-speed he can manage to attain in two strides. I didn't feel concerned on the drop-offs, and he was pretty peppy as we were coming in the last few miles.

As I told pft, I'm not concerned about his physical capabilities when it comes to doing VC100 - on the contrary, I think his body will handle it fine. But I *am* concerned that he won't do well metabolically if I can't get him to imbibe properly before/during the ride.

One of the things I forgot to do during the lead up to this ride was feed him a bunch of salt in his feed to make sure he drank well ahead of time. And I forgot the part where in the past I said that if I took him and Roo to a ride, I'd ride Roo on the first day to give Uno a chance to tank up again, as he doesn't seem to eat at all while travelling. pft suggested that it might be a good idea to unload him half-way along the journey, to try and get him to eat.

For VC100, I'm planning on going up to Tami Rougeau's in Reno on Thursday evening. That way, he'll eat/drink overnight and we'll drive the 45 mins to VC ridecamp on Friday morning, giving him and me all day Friday to settle down and not feel uptight (the way I usually do). Hopefully that plan of attack will mean he's nice and rounded come Saturday morning (when I'm already having mild heart palpitations about the idea of having to start with the pack in the dark in the middle of Virginia City).