Well Cooley was fun, but also a long hard stressful day. Bad enough that I think I will take a break for a bit. It started off good. The night before I put Rifles boots on trying a small amount of goober glue for padding around his frog. I put Kates front boots on with goober glue but as her back boots can rub I left them off. My lovely husband got up around three and feed the horses for us so I did not have to get up till 4:30am. My friend Cyd agreed to ride Rifle for me so we went and caught our horses about 5am. Now the fun started. I knew I was running low on goober glue so I had borrowed some from Cynthia the night before. It took what I had left and hers just to do one boot. Crap, now I have to find more. Thank goodness Cynthia had another tube. A passing stranger helped me get it in the gun and I though I was set. No, now it won't come out. So I woke my husband up with a plea for help. He finally got it working, well it exploded but we had enough glue to finish the last boot. So running a bit late after all this and out comes E, the junior I was sponsoring at 10min till the start and she had just caught her horse. Ahh, we're going to be late. All three of us helped her tack up Joey and we hopped on to start 15min late.
As we have not had time for a warm up we walk down the trail. Thank goodness the antsy people were long gone so our horses were happy to walk. Not even 5 min down the trail Kate starts getting pissed at her boots. One comes off and then the other. Wet goober glue, not a good thing. Learned this the hard way. So I attach the unbroken one to my saddle and carry the other as the gator tore off. We finish the first mile where we cross the road and I stashed the broken boot to pick up later. The next four or so miles are all hills, we made quite good time going up and down repeatedly and came into the vet check. I stopped to ask the vet if it was ok to keep riding with my hind boots until the hold in about 6-8 miles. He was quite laid back and said sure, just come back sound lol. So out we went for the second part of the loop.
Now it was my junior E's turn to have problems. She was riding Joey in a different saddle than the last race as his old one was not fitting. They had been on several conditioning rides and had no problems so we all assumed it was fine. Then he started bucking. Thank goodness she is a good rider and was not bothered by it. We assumed it would stop soon, but no he consistently bucked the rest of the loop. Humm, is it the saddle or something else. We came into the vet check and my mare was already down as I had been on the ground walking for the last few miles. Rifle took 1-2 min to come down but boy was he down at 52bpm. Then I look around for E and Joey, they're standing at the beet pulp and he's no where near down. My wonderful husband takes my horse and I go help her splash water on Joey. He comes down in another 5 min and we all head over to our pile of gear. We let Kate and Rifle munch for a minute while we get organized then over to vet through. Both pass easily, I think Kate had a B for gut sounds but all other A's. We check in with E and Joey and bummer, he has no gut sounds. They say he can go on only if he eats well during the hold. Well after spending an extra 45min at the vet check after our hold time is over Joey is still no looking great so they pull. So sad for E and Joey, but eager to get going on the second loop as we are last out of the vet check. Now we have lost an hour time wise but at least we are heading out and both horses have all four boots on.
To be continued.....
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