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[RC] Easyboot Epic/Bare Trial #4 - AprilSome of you may have seen my earlier Easyboot Epic trial posts. I've now added a pair of Bares on the hinds. Today, Tanna and I were joined by Angie and Khasey for a Christmas Eve day training ride. We pretty much had the trails to ourselves for most of the day. We did see a couple of other small groups out, but it was very nice to be able to have the trails to ourselves. Percy Warner Park is a very popular horse trail system and we expected to see more riders, but I guess others had family obligations. Anyway, on to the trial. I went out at 7 AM to get Tanna's boots on. At 7:50, I had all 4 boots on with vet wrap. About the timing I was expecting. I was pleased, though, to be able to get both front Epics on in 10 minutes! I lunged Tanna for a few minutes to watch him move in the boots. He did pretty well. He smacked the bottoms of the fronts a few times, but seemed to do ok. I turned him back in the paddock to wait until time to leave for the park. We did 17 miles in 3 hours. Tanna moved a lot better this trip! He still wanted to go crooked occasionally, but it was much less and he straightened up when I asked him to. All boots stayed firmly on his feet and when I removed the boots, I saw no signs of rubbing or soreness on any of the four feet. The Bares came off a lot easier than I thought they would. I put the heel of my hand on the boot ledge to the outside of the hoof and shoved hard. The boots just popped right off. I think they might have loosened up with the riding. I'll tighten them up one hole before my next ride. I still think I might rasp the fronts of the Epics to try to speed up the breakover of the fronts and make it easier for Tanna to keep his feet out of the way. I also want to try using the boots without vet wrap. It would make it easier (and cheaper) to use the boots if I didn't have to wrap the pasterns all the time. Photos and descriptions on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/endurancerider/sets/72157594436799045/ For those of you that like GPS data: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.do?episodePk.pkValue=1783116 Merry Christmas to all and to all I wish horsey kisses, April Nashville, TN http://www.tracetribute.com http://endurancerider.blogspot.com
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