Endurance - whoa we are tired now!

It has been a "very" busy couple of weeks, beginning with our first endurance ride of the season, held here in Summerland on Saturday, June 15th.  It all stated out SO well, we arrived Friday evening and vetted our horses in, Warren made me a wonderful camp spaghetti dinner and we bedded down the horses, they were content!

By the way, if anyone notices that *Serenade's tail this year is a bit short.... it is :(  The orphan colt that I rescued last year ate the tails off of several of my horses, *Serenade's, he ate at least a foot of it in one night!
Anyhow, a good night's sleep and we were up and saddled and ready to go at 7:20 for a 7:30 start time.  Unfortunately, at 7:20, Warren's horse Dakota could no longer stand the suspense of the pre-ride and he took off on his own!  He galloped out of there like the devil was on his tail!  I got on Serenade and went after him of course, thinking that he would run a mile or two and then stop and eat the plentiful grass, but NO, he was on a race (or so he thought) and I followed him out for about 5 miles, finally catching up to him and then I ponied him back to the campground!  We did about 10 miles in about 1 hour and 20 minutes!  So when we got back we decided to go out on the ride anyway even though we were at the far end of the riders... To Finish Is To Win.... so off we went on our first loop.  The first loop went well and we had our break - here are some pictures of the vet check.  These pictures also show a bit better view of our Curly horse shirts :)

So after our 45 minute hold we went out again on our second (my third!) loop but unfortunately, we made a wrong turn and followed the wrong set of flagging and even though we did the right number of miles, we didn't get a completion on this ride!  It was disappointing, but still, *Serenade did over 30 miles that day and did a great job for us.
Here are a couple of photos of us coming back from the second loop.

So it was a lot of riding, exhausting and yet it all turned out okay - it is always very scary when a horse takes off fully tacked in the middle of nowhere.... so we were very grateful to get him back!

So this past weekend we did a 12 hour drive from our home to the ridesite in Devon, AB (near Edmonton) to do a 25 mile endurance ride.  *Serenade was a bit tired after the drive (we took 2 days to get there).

We had a great time at Devon, the people in Alberta are the best!  The weather was great, the food and company was awesome!  There was no one taking pictures though, so I thought I would share with you our completion certificate and also our vet score card, front and back.  As you can see, we were in the top ten, placing 7th, which put us in the running for BC or Best Condition - we didn't get that prestigious award, but I was happy to be considered for it! 

Okay, well, we are pretty tired now!  Resting up for the upcoming Calgary Stampede, we are going to be part of the Light Horse Display again this year, July 5, 6, 7, 8, 9th, so stay tuned for our blog about that!

Shelly in Summerland, BC

Curly Standard Place