The Great Hunter Pace Adventure (Part 1)

So Saturday morning I headed over to the barn nice and early to (a) confirm my horse’s shoe was back on and (b) get everything ready for the pace.  Fortunately, Mabou’s shoe was on, but, I discovered that his left from leg was hot and puffy in the top of the tendon behind the cannon bone, right below his knee.  I immediately had my trainer look at it, although he was sound she agreed with me that he shouldn’t go to the pace.  Which left me horseless for sunday’s pace.

Meet Billy

Trainer so nicely offered to let me take one of her horses, Billy, a jumper who competes in the 3’6″.  I was happy to have a horse to take, but a little nervous to ride him for the first time galloping in huge open fields and jumping stone walls.  But, I didn’t want to miss out on the last pace of the year so I thankfully accepted her offer.

Sunday morning we all arrived at the barn bright and early, gave a quick groom, and loaded 7 horses into the big rig and 2 into the 2 horse trailer (yes 9 of us went, we go big!).  I jumped into the truck towing the two horse that my friend D was driving, along with our other friend C, and away we went to North Salem, NY.

About thirty minutes into our trip, D said she felt something funny and pulled over.  I got out to investigate and this monstrosity is what greeted me:

We had gotten a blowout, a super bad blowout.

We quickly called the people who were in the other truck, which pulled over up ahead of us.  We inched our way along the shoulder to pull up right behind them, so all 9 of us could help out to change the tire.

We successfully got the trailer’s good wheel up on the trailer jack and set to work removing the blown out tire.

And then a kind man stopped and offered us help.  I am all for girl-power, but in some situations, like this one, you just need a man around.  (Hubby was at work or else you better believe I would have called him to come change it)

our hero’s red truck

The kind man, who we will just refer to as hero, realized that we jacked the trailer too close to the curb and it was impossible to put the spare tire on with the curb blocking.  So down went the trailer from the jack, the truck and trailer was moved, and put back on the jack.  Good thing the horses were such good sports about this situation.

ta-da

The hero quickly got the tire on and squared away, with all 9 women standing around in a circle watching him work.  Thanks to him, we were back on the road without too much delay!

Will have to put the rest of this adventure, when we arrived at the pace, into a separate post!

 

PS- Vet comes today to ultrasound Mabou’s leg (better safe than sorry), so we shall see how that turns out!