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[RC] Appaloosa National Championship Endurance Ride 2009 (Travels with Spanky) Part 1 - Lucie Hess

A Little Background of the Championship:
The ANCER  is a revival of  a previous Appaloosa  Distance Championship event.  That event was held in the late 70's /early 80's.  The "old" Championship rides stopped being held many years ago, but with the increased interest in Distance Events, the Endurance Championship was "restarted" 4 years ago.  To be honest, most people, except for some of us "really" old-timers never knew there had been previous events and they think this is "all new".
This year was the 4th year of the event.  The Endurance Championship moves from AERC Region to Region. The championship "piggybacks" onto established Endurance rides.
The event has been held in Wisconsin, Tennessee (Big South Fork), Oklahoma, and now Ohio.  The attendance has fluctuated, over the various years, I believe the highest number of horses entered has been in the low 20's.
Horses entered in the Championship must be nominated in the Appaloosa Distance program and must be qualified by finishing a required number of miles.

I have "crewed" the first 2 Championships and then competed in the last 2. 

This year started off pretty iffy, Spanky has had problems with a suspensory injury and I have been working on "bringing him back" using  slow LD rides.  My plans for a  busy ride season were shot in May when he came up lame in the non injured leg, after acting stupid in the lot with my 2 other horses.  So I rested him until July, then starting riding him and went back to  in LD's in August. I rode in 2 30 mile rides, one in Northern Illinois and the other in Michigan.  Both really fun rides.  He did well and I had plenty of horse left after each ride, actually I felt pretty good after both rides and knew I could do a 50 without getting too "washed out"  I had also ridden a NATRC CP ride on my other Appy in July, so I was working on conditioning the horse and the rider.

I had hoped to find a friend to crew for me, but no one was able to take off of work, so since I had begun my Endurance career without a crew and rode without a crew for years, I thought what the heck, back to taking care of myself.   It really wasn't a big deal, I had a few people help me during the ride, so I was good.

The ride site was over 11 hrs away by Map quest..< Cuyahoga Valley National Park near Akron/ Cleveland, Ohio.> I usually add  another couple of hours for traveling pulling a trailer. I decided to look for a place to overnight, and got on the Internet. I had found that the Indiana State Fair would provide overnight accommodations.  
The fairgrounds in in Indianapolis,  was about 6 hrs from me.  I decided I would call and get directions to the Fairgrounds and find out where I was supposed to park.  Good thing I did, the Fairgrounds manager told m, that they have not been able to provide overnight horse stabling or camping for over 4 years, he apologized that they were still listed on the Internet.  He gave me a name of a overnight facility about 26 miles further west. I called and made contact with the new facility, got directions and made plans for traveling.
So Thursday Morning, I loaded up Spanky, and Charlie (the traveling dog) he's my secret weapon, he's a BIG dog about 80 pounds, and is part Sharpei, so he looks vicious. Well, he could lick someone to death, I guess.
Then we're off!   Part 2 later..




Columbia, Missouri
NATRC Region 6
AERC # 65
AERC Central Region
OCER member