This past June, I had a hip replaced. For three months the horses had a total holiday, though their trims were kept up to date. When I was allowed to start riding again, their Easyboot Gloves didn’t seem to fit…I had a sneaking suspicion that they had inched up to a new size boot! Sure enough, after their next trim, I reassessed their sizes. When first going booted instead of shod, he started with 0’s on the hinds and 0.5’s on the fronts. They quickly became 0.5’s and one 1. Now my main man’s 1 is a 1W and two of his 0.5’s are now 1’s. Only one foot still fit into a 0.5. How interesting that after four years of having bare hooves, they changed again.
Photo by Nipper Noble
So onto the beautiful Moab Canyons Ride. My friend Dana and I decided to use Easyboot Glue-Ons on the fronts and started bare on the hinds. I chose to have Christoph Schork (aka The Bootmeister) add quick studs to my Glue-Ons for better traction on the slick rock; they worked great. Dana’s horse, Miles, moves differently than Quest and does fine without the studs. Everything was perfect for a wonderful three day ride. By the last day we decided to add Gloves on the back feet since there were some stonier sections. It was a good choice and the horses were quite happy. We did remove them on the very last stretch, heading down “Wipe-Out Hill”, just to make sure we didn’t slide down the steep slick rock. The rest of the way home was sandy so we simply scooted home. It was a very exciting time for me, to be back in the saddle and rolling down the road!
Mari Ural