Urban Challenge ride story -by Teresa Van Hove

["guest@endurance.net" <guest@endurance.net>]

Teresa Van Hove vanhoe@ucar.edu
Grey and I went to our first ride of the year saturday. The urban challenge
was very challenging this year.  Aurora had recieved 16 inches of snow
Tuesday night.  Can you say sloppy?  RM Linda Fisher made the best of
the bad circumstances with some inspired re-routing, but there was
still a stretch of a couple of miles down a field road that was slick
mud under snow.  The edge was not bad footing but ran along an old
barb wire fence with downed wire that sneaked out from the fence line
in places.  Lots of horses took one too many bad steps here and
ended up pullled. The 50's did this section twice and the 2nd
round got Grey Moun. He nearly fell at one point, but managed to
stay up and had 2 other nasty mis-steps. I should have kept him along
the old fence edge but I was letting him pick his route. He felt fine
on the course after that section, and pulsed down right away at
the 38 mile vet check, plus had 10/9 on that CRI, so not much pain
but he was consistently off at the trot and reactive on the tendon
when the vet tested it so we trailered to the finish line. It was
my brothers birthday so I went home instead of staying for the
awards.  Cheryl Winters won, and Randy Winters and Frank were
right behind in the 50 and I didn't hear any of the 25 results.

Grey was still a little off on Sunday, but I could only see it on
a staight trot out.  He's getting buted and iced for a few
days but I dont think there is much damage; my "wonder wimp"
does not mask pain, so I don't have to worry that things
are worse then he shows. This weekend its off to Utah for me,
to ride Antelope Island. Grey will be home resting, I'd figured
that he wouldn't be ready for a 2-day ride and made arrangements
to lease a horse - Thanks Dorothy Sue, earlier this spring.
Hopefully Grey will be ready for Pawnee on May 12, and all
the other rides I'd like to do with him the rest of the year.

Thanks for putting on the ride Linda and for providing the
"horse ambulance" service.

Teresa and Grey Moun