Poodles&Ponies: Things All Women Should Know...

So, I attended a clinic in Marquette over the weekend.
How easy could that be, I thought. Marquette is only 100 miles away; compared to any other venue it's practically a walk in the park!

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Never tempt fate. And if you thing something's wrong, it usually is.

So, I hooked up my trailer at 5:30 Saturday morning on the first try.. Those of you who own goosenecks and are too short to actually see the bed to line it up know what a good thing this is. Compounded by hooking up in the dark, I was really on a roll. Today is going to be a good day.

Until I noticed that the drivers' side rear tire on my trailer was low. So I grabbed my handy dandy little air compressor and inflated it back up to 42psi. Another crisis averted; though I would have really preferred to have the tire fixed, the local tire places didn't open until 8:30. I could make it to Marquette by then and have the tire looked at there while I let Bucky chill in his new stall and acclimate to his new surroundings. The tire was holding pressure, so Bucky hopped on in (with a little pony bribe) and of we went.

We made it roughly 20 miles.

I kept checking the trailer tires in my mirror. Call me paranoid, but when you have a free-leased grand prix horse in your trailer, paranoia is positively justified. And this Saturday, it was prophetic.

Roughly 18 miles into our trip, I noticed the sway. The trailer tires were fine, but I chose to pull into the gas station anyway.

And it was a Damn good thing I did, too.

I picked up a piece of gravel in my drivers side rear truck tire, and it managed to puncture the tread of my new tires.

See that?
Air was streaming past that rock like a blow dryer

Yep, I've had these tires less than a year. The tread shows practically no wear. And we were totally crippled by a little piece of gravel.

So here's the moral of the story, ladies: Always know how to change your own tires and have tire chocks for your horse trailer.

Now, I was plenty pissed off that I had a destroyed tire, but I wasn't totally devastated because I knew that last year I bought not four, but five brand spanking new tires. So I went to lower my spare from it's comfy home under the truck only to discover that one cannot lower a spare with a trailer attached. There just wasn't room to crank down the spare. So I unhooked the trailer, pulled the truck up a bit and then proceeded to winch down my spare. Then I loosened my lug nuts then jacked up the truck. After I pulled off the hot melted wreck that used to be a $200 tire, I noticed something.
My spare was about 4" smaller than my other tree tires.
And instead of having the nice new treads it was practically bald.

What. The. Fuck.

Evidently some time in the past three weeks, someone stole my spare. And replaced it with this piece of crap.
Oh, come on. they probably just gave you the wrong spare when you got your new tires.
Nope. Nuh-uh. Not at all.

Yep. This one is done.

I know because I checked it out when I was hauling to Rehinelander for lessons (I learned from my flat-spare episode). It was the big, new fully aired spare.

So here I am with a too-small-spare, a horse trailer and a very expensive horse (and tack) sitting in a parking lot. So i called a friend, to follow us with flashed on while I trailered home, dropped Bucky off and then proceeded to limp to the nearest tire place that's open on a Saturday. Which happened to be 20 miles in the wrong direction.
Of course.
But two new tires (and a leak repaired on the trailer tire) and $500 later, we were off on our way to pick up Bucky and attend that clinic.

Of course my Saturday ride I was not impressed. All the clinician said was "Good!" "What a nice horse!" or "Try to go deeper in the corners".
That was the extent of our Saturday lesson. Sure, maybe he was tired since we had arrived at the end of the day. Sure I was short tempered due to my morning. But still, I want to work for that $100 lesson!

Sunday was better. Instead of riding for 7's I told the clinician that I wanted to ride for 10s, so we slowed Buckys tempo and lowered his neck and voila! Bucky the Wonder Horse was just super!