Submitted by TE2014 Member Stacey Maloney
Our accumulation of miles in our Easyboot Epics continues as the riding season goes on here in Alberta.
We’ve logged countless miles conditioning on the gravel roads in preparation for our Competitive Trail Riding season with my two horses, KC and Marina. Living on the prairies surrounded by crop land doesn’t give us much options when it comes to quick hop-on-an-go conditioning ride. Any trails are actually just tractor access roads that quickly land us back on the gravel roads. I don’t mind though; when the roads are soft we can head out barefoot which helps in creating tough, hard hooves, and when the roads are dry and hard, out come the Easyboot Epics to provide traction and protection for a comfortable ride.
In order to actually hit the trails, we have to haul for at least an hour heading west into the foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The weather this year has been either really wet or really dry, without much in between. A lot of the trails are parched hard and dry with the bogs hidden in the trees. We recently headed down to Sandy McNabb Provincial Park for a day ride and the trails were exactly as described above, with scattered river rock on a lot of the dry trails as result of last year’s devastating floods.
Being that it was our first time at the park, we didn’t really have any idea where we were going or what trail we were on. Each person who passed us would ask first about what trail we thought we were on and secondly about our hoof boots. “It’s really muddy in here, our horses are slipping all over the place, are you having any trouble with your boots?” and our answer was always the same “No trouble at all!”.
In a more recent adventure, I had set out for a planned eight-mile ride and had some storm clouds forming what I thought was way away to the NW. About three miles into our ride I started thinking, huh, that’s looking kind of dark. Another mile away from home I thought, Uh-Oh I’m going to get rained on and so began our race against the storm. Without those Epics, we never would have made it home as fast as we did. The dry, parched road was hard hard hard but KC’s Easyboot Epics gave him the protection he needed to cruise home at a good clip, which I think he quite enjoyed with the cool breeze in his mane. We made it home only slightly soggy and got to hide out for the worst of it no worse for wear.
