Megasus and the Moonlight Trail Ride

A few days before the hunter pace, my Megasus Horserunners FINALLY arrived. This was, of course, after I caved and put shoes on Gwyn.  I grumbled to Eric about the irony and the hit to our checkbook when I had to have the shoes replaced days after they were initially put on. They had been holding.

Had been.

A couple days after the hunt pace I went out to feed and Gwyn was once again missing a shoe. I wailed about a bit and gnashed my teeth and finally opened up the horserunners box because dammit I wasn't about to pay YET AGAIN to have the farrier put shoes on when these should do for such a situation. Nor did I want to miss out on a moonlight trail ride in two days and I also did not want Gwyn to be on that ride missing a shoe.

So... the unveiling:

I kickstartered for 2 sets. Apparently I also got the winter version? I don't remember that being an option and I'm a little miffed about it as I would have gotten the summer ones, TBQH

Fancy packaging. Was this the delay?? Who knows.

Like I said, we got the winter edition? They'll have to deal with being used in the summer because I'm not paying again for these fuckers.

They are pretty solid and a garish orange and blue that makes me flash back to grad school at the University of Florida. 

The thickness. Those slots are where the clips that attach to the hoof slide into

All of the additional gear needed to attached these suckers to the hoof

The tiniest nail polish size bottle (with nail polish brush) of solvent I've ever seen. Smells like paint thinner

The covers, more on this in a moment

Nice bright blue

The tapes attach to the hoof and provide one side of the 'velcro' that the clips lock onto

The side clips

So I got to prepping Gwyn's foot for Megasus attachment. First up was cleaning her hoof. They wanted me to bloody buff the hoof but I settled for wire brushing it. I might go find a buffer to sand down her hoof to get better adhesive attachment for future tapes but I'm not displeased.

You start by putting in the front two clips. You mark on the hoof where the center is and line that up, then also mark where the clips are. This is your guide for putting on the tapes.

You can see the nasty crack I've been fighting. Also, there's still nails in her hoof from the shoe. WTF is up with that? I rasped and wire brushed her hoof and then avoided touching it since the instructions say to not have grease of any kind on the foot or it'll ruin the adhesive. You mark around the hoof on the shoe itself.

It looks long in the back, but that's okay, because it pretty much is guaranteed to get removed.

With those markings all set and ready to go, you use the solvent on the hoof and let it dry, which will happen quickly because it's a solvent and pretty much trying to evaporate as soon as it hits air. Then you carefully remove the backing on the tapes and apply them to the hoof, starting at the markings you made from where the front clips land.

Now, I misplaced these on the hoof. They should curl up more and be further from the ground. But again, I'm not too put out by the error and it's working okay for now.

Then I set up the covers, which go on over the tapes.

I put the covers on at night and went back the next day to prep her for my night trail ride. The covers were gone. So much for what I said about them in the video. As of this writing, I have only recovered one cover from my pasture. So that leaves 3 horse shoes and 1 megasus cover unaccounted for.

Friday I also used the jigsaw to cut away the extra shoe. The whole thing is a pretty thick plastic. Gwyn is pretty solidly a perfect fit to this size so I really didn't need to do much adjusting. It also meant that I didn't have to worry about sharp edges. I did use a rasp to take it down a little bit. I did not do the recommended 45 deg angle under the heel as I just didn't have the time. 

Upon retrieving her and inspecting the tapes, the back bit of tapes pulled away from the hoof, but that's also where I wasn't able to really rasp down the hoof and prep it for adhesive. I clipped away what was no longer sticking. Everything else was solidly attached so I went ahead with doing the final clips and adjustments. Then we loaded up for our trail ride!

The previous owners of our house are starting a non-profit designed to help veterans with PTSD and they were hosting a Full Moon Trail ride on the Polly Ann Trail! She needed to get a special permit for the ride as after dark usage is not permitted.

I met Alicia there and it was great. My tail lights were out of battery, which made me sad because that would have helped at some points on the ride as it turned out. Instead I had reflective gear, which was at least beneficial for the road crossings. Alicia forgot her cinch, and ended up riding bareback. Oops...

The following pictures are screen grabs from the go pro.

Just after mounting up, 9pm at the Leonard trail head. Moon has not risen.

Gwyn immediately thought we were going to go fast again. Oops

Crossing Rochester Rd. If you turned right and went a few miles you'd get to my house!

Bareback Alicia

Two happy horses in the lead. 

Gwyn pretty much took off at a swinging walk. She wasn't impeded at all by the Megasus shoe and in fact was moving very confidently. We were leaving the quarter horses in the dust and they had to trot to keep up with us.

This the field where later a fucking truck was off roading at nearly 11pm at night and scared the FUCK out of Gwyn and she went spooking toward this opening only there's a bloody chain across it and thankfully I stopped her in time.

The full moon, also a blood moon, as seen on the go pro, lol

The ride was very eventful. I think Gwyn likely has at least some bit of moonblindness as she got incredibly spooky once it got dark. While she is very much a 'must be leader on the trails' kind of mare, she was much happier after dark following other horses. The final nail in that coffin was when a fucking bicyclist was coming at us. Us humans couldn't see him, he wasn't lit up at all and Gwyn lost her  mind.  Remember, we had a special permit for night use. He should not have been there.

We all may have yelled at him, made him get off the damn bike and talk constantly as we passed him. Gwyn thought she was going to get eaten.

Did I mention that two of the horses were studs? They were decently well behaved until one spooked a little and his bit got caught in his breast collar. He went up and over backwards with his rider - who was not wearing a helmet - and we all freaked out. Old house owner S hopped off immediately to help, her daughter who is like 12, was freaking the fuck out and Alicia just calmly started running through a concussion screen like it's her job because it basically is (she's a vet tech).

The rider was shaken but thankfully okay, and so she and S walked a bit of the trail on foot for a while to calm down.  We were still 2 miles from the trail head. We had done an hour out but two of those miles in the hour out were at a decent clip and it was not going to be the same time going back as we were much slower.

On top of it all, S's horse (one of the studs) was in the pen they have and ran into a nest of yellowjackets and they both came running out in a panic because he got stung and S is allergic. 

So it was eventful. But it was also beautiful. The fireflies are still going so the darker forested parts of the trail just sparkled and glittered with their blinking light. We were dive bombed by bats feasting on the bugs. I didn't get one mosquito bite. It was almost chilly, in the upper 60sF and while there were some clouds, they cleared as the moon rose, beautiful and red, with Mars trailing to the side bright as could be. Alicia and I laughed and laughed, even through some of the scarier parts because I'm a nervous laugher. But we had an amazing time. The shoe held up quite well and was a pain to get off, which I'm calling a positive because if I have to freaking pry the thing, it's not going to just come loose on the trail. I have an amazing mare who trusts me and is game for pretty much anything, which is my dream horse. Instead of being frustrated at our slow return pace, I worked on using my seat to rate her back and she was mindful and listened. I hold no blame for her spooks. I knew this is an eventuality with her eye injury and because she's part Appy. I blame the idiots who were joy riding. I blame the moron riding his bicycle where he was not allowed.

She's my best mare and my buddy and it was really nice to have 'just' a ride with friends that night. It was the perfect end to a really long work day.

May 27 ride 3.95 miles

I had a good ride on Wednesday. I wanted to get pictures of Gwyn's eyes to track the redness and see if anything that I'm doing is helping her out. 

The snakebite side. Still red, but it actually is not as bad. Every time I go out I've been using artificial tears in her eyes and she's wearing a fly mask now to go out. Hopefully that will keep damage to a minimum. When I have her at home the eye drops will be an every day occurrence prior to turnout. 

You can see in comparison to the two photos that she has drooping of the lid compared to the non-damaged side. 

Noms during the ride

She was a bit of a goosy girl on this ride. I worked on listening to steering, especially when we are traveling toward the barn and then turn away from the barn, especially at a canter. She was finally getting it on our third attempt. I really want to get out to a cross country course to evaluate away from 'home' to see if this problem still exists but it's still an issue. Correctable, but can't continue. Also frustrating that aside from consistency I don't see any quick fixes. I do welcome advice. Usually if she starts getting stubborn I'll do a quick one rein stop and then turn in the direction I originally intended and carry on. If I try a circle and she starts ignoring me we'll keep circling until she's soft and listening.

She also, in a fight with steering almost fell into one of the ditches between the hay fields and corrected at the last minute. I decided to send her through the ditch once my heart beat calmed down and she crossed it really well! I was actually a bit surprised. No hesitation and no crazy leaping. 

2.07 miles! And some videos

I was feeling under the weather today so I decided to keep the ride simple. We just walked, but we worked on seat aids and contact in the bridle. Also steering. We worked on lots of steering out in the hay field since Gwyn likes to turn for home randomly.  I worked on sitting evenly in the saddle and also worked on really having a strong right leg when I didn't want her to turn right. 

Testing out a temporary fly mask until I can order a fancy-schmancy $100 one that blocks a ton of UV light.

The affected eye. Her lower lid should curve up and not expose as much of the sclera. You can also see the old scar on the eye itself in this photo.

The one drawback.... a top line of barb wire on this defunct fenceline between hay fields.

The awful phase where she readjusts to being barefoot after having shoes. The toe is actually breaking to a nice shape, it just looks TERRIBLE. I've been rasping it to try and control the breakage and keep it to a minimum.

I took a video today of Gwyn

And some over the ears video so you can see where I ride right now!

4.22 miles under an hour!

Today was a chilly day. It never really got above the mid 50s. Thank goodness I had a jacket in my car....  All of the horses were staying in because the vet was coming today so I made sure to lunge Gwyn first.

Working well....

Weeeee!

Working well again

I wanted to get back out into the fields again and leave the ring work be for now. I'll be a bit more restricted to ring work once we move so I don't want to sour Gwyn on it. My goal was to push myself physically and try and get in more miles in the same amount of time. This means more trotting and cantering and hitting the perimeter of each field at least twice.

Gwyn was pretty good. I'm also noticing an improvement in myself, which is encouraging with all the exercise I've been doing out of the saddle. My focus in the canter work was to make sure I could rate her back with half halts from the seat and have less a hand gallop and more of a true canter. It worked today!  We only had a couple minor spooks and nothing I fell off due to. 

I've noticed I'm way weaker on my right side and I tend to sit more heavily on my left foot. This needs to change for Gwyn's sake as well as for mine. 

It was a pleasant day.

When I got back Gwyn was hardly sweating and the vet had finally arrived. She was going to be working on a lot of horses so I went and picked up Kaylee from school, grabbed her jacket and some lunch, gas for the car, and headed back to the barn with the toddler in tow.

Gwyn greets Kaylee

I had the vet give Gwyn her spring shots, specifically Potomac Horse Fever and rabies. We discussed Gwyn's ever present red eye and she proposed an interesting cause. Long ago Gwyn was bitten by a rattle snake and while there was no noticeable long term internal damage that I could ever determine, it seems like the nerves that control her eye lid were negatively affected. Her lower lid droops and doesn't keep the eye properly covered. The upper eye lid cannot close fully and her blinks are odd. The vet even demonstrated for me and sure enough, I can't believe I didn't see it before.

The solution at this point is to give her some artificial tears and see how that changes things. It may be what she needs! I'm also going to be getting a super fancy fly mask for turnout that has 95% UV blockage. I hope those things can provide some relief. I'm so paranoid about uveitis with her being part appaloosa that I really want her eyes to be in the best health they can be. 

Kaylee watches the vet tech clean the dental tools.

Then we went outside to put Gwyn away and explored the birds nest in the arena. Hurray for science!