Cooley Ranch part 3 the end.

So I was hoping for more pictures to post of Rifle from the ride but Cyd can't get them off her camera :( On a better note I do have another video of him up on youtube. http://youtu.be/O-du3AloiIo

On to the ride. We started out the third and final loop with all four boots on both horses. We're hot and tired but know we are almost to the end and are grateful to go back through the river and get wet. So back through the river, down the road, turn at the house and oops, there goes Rifle's front boot. Cyd jumps off to get it but the wire holding the boot together has broken and I can't fix it on the trail. As I keep thinking Rifle is going to sell I didn't have a spare boot. There was a size two epic in the saddle bag but I had tried it on him before and it would not go on. But as our horses have done lots of conditioning barefoot we decide to keep on going with Rifle missing a front boot. Now I had not ridden this loop before and did not know the next part was through a river bed for several miles. I started to get a bad feeling as this was a lot of rocks to be walking on with no protection. Just as I was about to try and rig something we went back to the dirt trail. We had caught up with our riding buddies at the river bed and we all continued on with them only loosing a boot once and the rest of ours staying on.
We jump off to go down the big hill and Cyd had me taking pictures with her camera. I put it in my helmet then about 5 min later got tired of carrying it and attached the helmet to my saddle. Yep, no surprise we got to the bottom when I realized I lost Cyd's camera. We are so tired and don't know exactly where the camera is and can't bear the though of going back. Hmm, I bet Forrest will let us borrow the 4-wheeler later and we can come back and get it. So down the trail a bit farther and thank goodness we have completed the circle and are back to the road. Now I start worrying about all the gravel on the way up to the hill and camp. We decide to stop and see if I can rig the epic to stay on. I take it out and pop, on it goes with no problems. I was so upset with my self. The boot went on easy and I could have saved Rifle around 8 miles of barefoot some with rocks. Oh well, up the hill and back to camp. We made it but we took the full 12 hours with all our boot and other problems. Rifle pulsed in at 48 and got all A and A-'s on his vet card.
After this ride and all our trouble I am a bit tired and have decided to just have some fun trail riding for awhile. Plus we need to work on getting the barn up. So next race is I know you rider in WY on July 28th.