I took one year from my first ride to my second ride. I received some interesting help and encouragement along the way. Truman Prevatt from Florida was a big help with advice. I received an interesting and gracious email from Julie Suhr the grand lady of endurance. She told me that she had started on a gaited horse but it just was not the right horse. She said she always knew that the right horse trained the right way would bring results. She encouraged me to be that person and not to give up.
I talked to my gaited riding buddies for a full year. We live by the Shawnee National Forrest and it is the most wonderful place to ride and train. While on rides, I kept talking about how much fun it was to do endurance and how I knew all of them could do it on their horses. Two of them took me up on the idea. Kelly Powell decided to try an Ld on his twh Buddy and much to my delight, my wife Sandy agreed to try an LD on one of her MFT mares Lady.
Lady came to us in a strange way. Sandy had a MFT gelding named Jubilation that was her first gaited horse and started to give her some problems. He would flop down in water without warning. Sandy decided that this was a bad habit she did not want to try and train through. A trainer from the deep south had told Sandy that friend of us wanted the horse and she should call him if Sandy ever decided to sell the horse. Sandy called him. The two MFT lovers drove 9 hours each way with two pregnant mares hoping Sandy would trade Jubilation. They used MFT to hunt squirrels with rifles from horseback.
Sandy traded for Country’s Shady Lady. Lady was beautiful but out of shape. Her gaits were elephant walk, stumble and pace. Sandy rode Lady until she got her in trail riding shape but we neither one knew how to solve the pace issue at that time. We turned to Rick Hayes of Creal Springs IL. He did a good job. Sandy took her a show in Kentucky and placed at her first time showing.
Sandy loved Lady and even took jumping lessons on her from a three day event.
I also got a new horse as a back up to Blues. This horse was a handful. His papered name was Rebel’s Master and he was a 16.1 TWH. He had been allowed to get barn sour and mare sour. He had also been allowed to get extremely out of shape and over weight. He was ridden once or twice a year and all Rebel wanted to do was go back to the barn. He preferred the most direct route back and preferred to go back by himself.
I bought the horse as a 7 year old and started him over as a colt who had never seen a saddle. Like the training I used for marathoning and triathloning, I kept records of the number of rides and the mileage we trained. Rebel came to us a very out of shape horse in October of 06.
As I trained both Blues and Rebel for the 2007 Dead Dog Creak Ride in Salem IL, Sandy started to get a vision for trying endurance on Lady. We had other gaited horses for her to use. She choose Lady simply because she loved her. Sandy was very apprehensive about the event. I took her and our entire gaited riding group to the course 2 weeks before and pre rode the course. Sandy was largely non committal. One other friend named Kelly Powell agreed to try endurance. Everyone else said “no thanks” but several of the women volunteered to crew. The announced they would crew for Sandy and cheer her on to victory. That would be victory over me by the way.
Blues rode the 50 on the first day of the ride and we had a good ride. He finished top ten.
We were warmly treated and received by management and vet staff. When I showed up with our horses for the pre ride vet in the vet greeted me with “You’re the one whose horses don’t trot!”
I talked with the vets and the ride management. Sandy had finally agreed to ride the 30 mile LD on the second ride day. I asked them to help her in any way they could and if we were together at the end of the 2nd 15 mile loop to secretly help her finish in front of me if they could. My plan was to ride near the front with Rebel on the first loop as I knew the course knew where you could get penned in behind other riders because of several narrow sections.
The ride started and I went towards the front. I had asked Sandy to put that mare’s nose on Rebel south end and follow me. Shortly into the race, I discovered she was not behind me. This saddened me as I very much wanted Sandy to have a good and safe time at her first ride. I prayed that she would be safe and I asked the Lord to care for her. I told him I knew he loved her more than I did, but that I was not waiting for her.
Two miles later I heard a noise to my left and looked up to see my little Sandy passing me on Lady. She was giving me the “Lance Armstrong look”. She was also giggling. She was also laughing. She was doing this all at the same time. I almost fell off of Rebel with surprise and delight. She pulled in front of and we came to the first creek. We were only 2 miles into the ride and their was no way our horses would drink after only 2 miles. Sandy came to the creek, gave a small heel to Lady who jumped the creek, hit the other side and they were both off in a clowd of dust. Those english jumping lessons had worked.
I saw them at the vet check and they were fine. They were also ahead of us. We were both in the top 5. Her team of volunteer crew swarmed Lady with cold water, sponges and affection. I remembered what I had asked the ride management to do to help my wife and almost laughed out loud. Who was this woman? You think you get to know your mate after 26 years of marriage.
We caught Sandy and Lady about a mile from the finish line. We pulled even as we crossed the line. Now the race was on to get our horses heart rates down. The day was warm. Sandy’s crew worked together as a team. I had one cowboy friend to lend me a hand. All the vets and the ride management were helping Sandy and Lady. I wanted to tell them to forget what I had said, but could not bring myself to shout that out.
Rebel’s heart rate came down just before Lady’s heart rate. Sandy swears it was because everyone knows a grey horse cools quicker than a black horse. That is her story and she is sticking to it. Rebel was 3rd and Lady was 4th.
Sandy was now bitten by the endurance bug and looking forward to going to another ride.
