Our second ever endurance ride of 25 miles was ill advisedly two weeks after the first, but it was a blast.
A thunderstorm rolled through right as we finished our vet in, and the human members of our party rolled into the tent while the horses stood butts to the rain for an hour or so. I've missed seeing lightning like that!!
The full moon was enough light to feed them both at 3 am when I couldn't sleep 😅. I do fully believe that the soaked soybean meal the night before and morning of is the reason they both flew through the hydration tests at the vet checks - neither of them wanted to drink from the funky cattle troughs.
The horses were formidable through the whole thing, and they kept us in 2nd and 3rd place for 22 miles. I was absolutely more tired, but Thea held her own, even with dramatically increased elevation gain. We did about 3000' across the 25 miles.
A set of six horses blew past us at the very end, led and swept by Tevis pairs, and only some really good mentorship kept me from deciding to race. We still vetted in before one of them, and the horses won in terms of final vet scores - A's across the board for Thea, minus a sore left hind where a rock got into her full coverage shoe. She got all the way down below 40 BPM within a half hour of our race completion!
Riding buddy got one B for hydration, which is much much better than last time, and both horses had great gut sounds! Last time we were fighting C's!
Would I have loved a higher placement? Totally. Is it far more important to me that Thea is excelling physically with this? Yes. We've got plenty of time to "win" a race, and besides, that isn't even my end goal. She had a blast, understood her job, and didn't act nuts about anything at all - she's practically a pro now!
I'm really happy to have found a calling for my sweet mustang. It was her 16th birthday on Friday - to many more, Thea!
