Scarier Than A Warmup Ring

I finally found something that is scarier than a warmup ring.  It was so scary that I didn't even take a single picture.  #bloggerfail

Grumpy Cowboy

Since my horse was hopping around on three legs I needed a new plan for Saturday.  The only good thing about Stinker's timing is there was an endurance ride right next to us on Saturday.  (We won't talk about how pissed he was about not being able to move while all the horses trotted by.)  I decided that I would show up and see if I could help out.

It all started by me finding the ride manager and saying, "Hi, do you need help?  I don't know anything, but I am good at following instructions so if someone tells me what to do I should be able to do it."  She told me to stick around and she was sure she could find something for me to do.

Sure enough about 5 minutes later, the ride manager paired me up with one of the people taking pulses.  My job was to write down the time and heart rate prior (and out time) for each rider that the person I was working with took the heart rate on.  They neglected to mention that I was supposed to be filling out the out time until about half way through the second check for the 50 milers.  Whoops.

It was actually really fun, but that box is a terrifying place to be in the middle of a rush.  Picture this, there were four people taking heart rates, a line of horses waiting for the vet check, more waiting to be pulsed in.  You are trying to hear your person call time, then calling out the rider's number and hearing the timer call back the rider's number plus the time.  Then getting that plus the heart rate written down, all while ducking horses and people.  The wind was blowing cones and chairs over so you have to keep an eye on spooky horses, plus all the red ribbons.  So many red ribbons in tails of horses and everyone is just packing on in.

The lady I was paired up with was really really interesting.  She has over 12,000 miles.  During the down time (and there is plenty of it) everyone sat around and chatted.  I learned a ton about booting and sizing them and why some people prefer certain brands.  It was also fun to see all the different tack setups and hear discussion on why you would do a certain thing.  Like the person that had a running martingale on some type of halter setup (so the horse couldn't flip the reins to the same side of the neck).

Plus there was so much purple.  Some of these girls put Megan to shame.  My favorite was the girl that had braided purple sparkly ribbons into her horse's mane.  My favorite was when someone asked me if I did endurance.  I said no and they asked if I was thinking about doing it.  I said not with my current horse.  So then they asked what I did do and I said mostly dressage.  To which they responded after a beat, "Well that is a type of riding."

The new shoes that I really like

At some point I would love to do an endurance ride, especially since there are so many in this general area.  I don't think it will be with Stinker.  I am pretty sure his mind will be totally blown with the whole atmosphere, but it looks like fun.