Whoops, Moved Again

Well my dream of  having a trainer have finally come true! I've moved Pony to a new barn with a new trainer who's putting two rides on her a week while I take one lesson a week. I'm super excited and I feel like we've already made a lot of progress over the last two weeks as shes been ridden by the trainer. Its amazing how well professionals ride, though I guess I really shouldn't be that surprised. I pay her what I do for a reason!

Pony's new digs are really nice. She has a paddock she shares with another mare and gelding and has a grass pasture attached as well.  I loved having the acreage at the last place, but walking five minutes to catch your horse gets old after a while and I like that she's always in sight, so if something goes wrong it'll be noticed. She also has not one, but two automatic waters accessible with thrills me beyond measure! I always worried she wasn't drinking enough at the old place when she was out in the back pastures and the water was all the way back by the barn. She could always get to it, I just worried she didn't go back to drink enough.

Making friends over the fence. 

Now that we're both on a schedule and making lots and lots of progress I need to start giving thought to the spring show season. Which is super exciting since we might actually be competitors next year. I'm hoping to show first level, but I'll do whatever my trainer thinks is best for Pony and I.

Overall I'm very excited to see what winter holds in store for us. The arena is heated, my trainer is awesome, and with regular lessons I might just become an awesome rider too!

Back To Normal

Well Pony finally settled in to where she feels like her normal self when she rides, not a crazy ball of nerves, but now she's all high on grass. This is the first time she's been on grass full time so she's a little chunkier than normal, especially since I haven't really been out to ride that much due to rain and general ickyness, and suddenly a bit herd bound. She's never been a vocal horse, but the grass has apparently fried her brain and now we must scream for our friends when they are gone. Let that be a lesson to you all, don't do grass kids!

I love walking a mile to get her...

Fortunately none of her friends actually care about her so they don't call back. Other than the screaming she's great. I now swear by vaseline on the corners of her lips, she hasn't been chompy at all with it!!!! She got a bath, which she of course hates because it wastes valuable eating time, but the water ran off brown when I was just hosing her down so I think it was time for it to happen. I put her out right back on grass so she wouldn't roll in the dirt while she was still a little wet and my trick worked so she's stayed as clean as one can hope. She also had her feet done yesterday and no one called me to say she was a horrible disaster so I'm assuming she wasn't too naughty for the poor farrier, she tends to be a bit of a brat when I'm not there...

The Cleanest of ponies 

We're doing a schooling show late June, dressage of course, so that should be interesting. I'm going to see if I can rope a friend into the insanity so I don't have to do it alone but she's a workaholic so we'll see. Plus her horse basically just sat for the winter and she's more of a western rider than a dressage queen but it would just be for fun.

Personally we will just be doing intro test A and one in hand class. I just want to see how Pony and I do at a show. Plus I love hearing people tell me how cute she is. I think she likes hearing it too, she's a bit of an attention whore.

Wish us luck!

Settling In

Finally I can take all the horrible
mirror selfies I desire!

Well the Pony has settled in really well to her new home. I am unbelievably happy with the choice I made. I had (well still have but I'm working on) confidence issues after the stress of my last job which transferred over to my riding. My first ride at the new barn was... interesting. After I stopped having a mild anxiety attack and actually got on her Pony was a rock star, though any one would be after being round penned and lunged twice before you anxiety riddled mom hopped on. I learned just how much I love mirrors in the arena. I couldn't stop watching how well we were doing and Pony was very interested in her new mirror friend as well.

Once I decided we wouldn't die if we rode outside we tried the outdoor dressage arena the next day. And we didn't die! Or buck, or do anything insane. We even went by a man with a chainsaw cutting logs like five feet away with naught but a tiny ear twitch. She then spooked at a dog, but that's fine it was black, small, and quite possibly vicious. The rubber in the footing was interesting, but didn't make any huge differences, not that I really expected one. What does seem to make a difference is putting some Vaseline on the corners of her lips. After reading reviews of Effol mouth butter I decided I was too cheap to actually order that and pay just as much in shipping as the product costs but I have Vaseline so that would have to do. She was soft in the mouth and didn't do any of her hideous chomping we sometimes do when we tried it! So that's a win.

So much room to run away!
(can you spot her?)

I finally rode out on the cross country course and we had a blast cantering around. Today I went out and we almost got up to a proper gallop, though she still is taking it slow and not quite opening up the way she can. Maybe she just needs someone to race. I forgot the Vaseline and she was a spooky, chompy mess. Maybe it was a coincidence and maybe not. I do know I'll keep up with the Vaseline though.

The other thing I've noticed is that she no longer tries to run away from me when I go to catch her. She did walk away the first day, but after that every time she's turned to face me and actually taken a couple steps towards me! Which is huge, since she used to run away when given a lot of space. It was a five minute walk to get her from pasture, and that might get annoying but right now I'm just so thrilled she isn't standing in mud or running when I come up to her.

Over all I'm really happy at the new barn and I can't wait to get into lessons and show this summer. We probably won't do great, but its really just about having fun and getting out there. As a bonus everyone thinks she's just the cutest thing. Which is, of course, true.

That New Barn Smell

So I decided that when I was no longer going to work at the barn where I used to have Pony I needed to move her. I've been to three, now four, different barns in three years. Which sounds kinda crazy, but there was a good reason for each move. I started keeping her at the first barn I worked at and when the stress of work and the judging eyes of my ex-coworkers got to be a little much I moved her to a barn nearby for the summer. It was cheap, had a good outdoor, a closet sized indoor, and a round pen. So I was happy for a summer, but as winter approached I knew I needed to change. I couldn't survive the winter without an arena I could actually ride in. So in the fall I moved to the barn I stayed at for a year and a half. They have a heated indoor (a must have for terrible Minnesota winters), and I could work off their frankly overpriced board. Then I got a job offer there, decided to give it a try and the vicious cycle of stress from work bleeding into my riding began again. So I decided to quit and here I am. Barn number four.

Settling In

This barn has an indoor (unheated, but I can bundle up), a grass jumping field, a dressage outdoor with special rubber footing, and a sand outdoor, along with a huge cross country course. Ponykins will be in the mare pasture with is in total 50 acres divided out so they don't over graze. Plus it has trailer parking! So no more parking my trailer half an hour away! And last but definitely not least, I have a tack locker of my very own!!!! No more putting my saddle on a rack in the arena! Pics to come once I get it all organized and looking pretty. 

First solo parking job!

So over all its super awesome and I'm excited to be here! I've decided I will not let myself get sucked into working here and ruin it for myself! 

Pony says it would be better with more treats

Moving On

Sometimes things work out and sometimes they don't. I thought I wanted to work with horses, as it turns out I do not. I find that when I work at barns I get stressed from work and it ruins riding for me. I've worked at two barns and its happened both times so I feel like I need to try something else. I still want to ride, there's no way I could completely quit horses, but working with them isn't what I need to be doing right now. So I gave my two weeks notice and will be switching barns as soon as possible. The new barn has three outdoor arenas, an indoor, a full cross country course, trailer parking, and fifty acres of pasture Pony will be rotated through. All of this is considerably less than what I'm paying now for half the amenities. I think we'll both love it. I plan on getting a regular person job and hopefully I'll be able to enjoy riding more when it can actually be an escape instead of a chore. So now I'm moving on, hopefully to bigger and better things.

Well I didn't die...

Well I did something I didn't think I'd be doing for a while... I jumped 2'3" with the pony in my last lesson. I'm not what you would call jump crazy, sure its kinda fun but it scares the crap out of me and I don't really like the loss of control I feel. So I try to micromanage everything while still being too scared to actually really ride. Basically I feel like its a shit show every time I jump. So a month ago I didn't think I'd go above like 1'6". I can just trot over cavaletti forever, right? 

Trainer doesn't think so. Fortunately as I progress it starts to feel less like a shit show and more like actual riding. Am I any good? No, of course not I just started a couple months ago. Do I want to jump 3'? Nope, I think 2'6" will probably be good for me. But its progress and as long as my trainer just keeps raising them without telling me how high I'm jumping we should be good! For example she hid the 2'3" into a line so it didn't look as high as it does alone and didn't tell me what it was.

For scale

So I guess I might not be restricted to showing over tiny xs when I decide to do some schooling shows this summer, I might even do a 2' class and there are some eventing shows I might look into as long as everything stays below 2'. Who knows, at this rate trainer might sneak a 2'6" in there and before I know it I'll be jumping 6'.

Proud Pony Mom

Pony had her first show with a the little girl who rides her yesterday and it went awesome! I was working the show (of course) but still found time to hide behind some people and watch their rides and I'm proud to say I only cried a little. Pony was awesome. They got first, third, and fourth place ribbons and I got their ride through the hunter course on video so I can watch it and cry some more whenever I want. I honestly never thought that I would get to see my horse be as good as she is.

The Pony herself on the day I bought her.

When I got Pony three years ago to say she was a project was an understatement. She was supposed to be used for the little kid lessons and I was supposed to get her trained in and ready. Calling her a mess would have been generous. She didn't really steer all that well, her trot and canter were described as an uncontrolled shot out of a canon, and to be honest for our first two rides I really didn't like her. But she has a way of growing on you and I still remember that third ride. She's a smart little beast and on that third ride we just clicked in a way I've never clicked with another horse before or since. I couldn't stop smiling the entire time I was riding and I knew I was doomed to buy this weird little pony thing. A couple months later she was mine.

Winners!

Now she's better than I ever could have imagined and making more people happy than I could have ever dreamed. No one ever thought she would amount to much, they certainly never thought she'd be as good with kids and as well behaved as she is now, and I can't wait to see where we go from here. Hopefully I'll be riding her in her next show, but for right now I'm happy as can be with where she is.

Sick

If only I could stuff this cute little mouth with treats today

That's right, I'm actually sick. I haven't been sick in years, since I eat a lot of dirt having worked with horses for the last nine years I feel like I have a pretty good immune system. Unfortunately it has failed me now. Since I have a fever I didn't go into work today which is a miracle in and of itself since I don't think I've ever actually taken a sick day before but I still want to see my horse. It seems like whenever I can't go out to the barn is when I want to the most. Like when I'm on vacation or home with a fever and a nose full of snot. So today is boring sit around day and hoping my fever goes down enough that I don't have to go into the doctors office today.

Lesson Time

I'm one of those people who gets stressed at work. Which I assume is most people, since you can't love what you do all the time. So I often times neglect to take my lessons, which is unfortunate because part of my pay is in the form of lessons and if I don't take them I don't get paid the difference, which kinda screws me over and is mostly my own fault but still sucks none the less.

The thing is I'm not able to push aside my stress and frustration before I ride, at least not most of the time. So when I get on and I'm already worked up Pony feeds into that, she gets worked up, and then we end up fighting because I'm tense and defensive and she will fight right back if I'm like that. So most of the time, when I feel like that I don't want to ride because I feel like it does us more harm than good and while I hate to be missing out on money I hate to ride my horse like an ass even more. So I skip them.

She loves her new halter fleeces! 

Yesterday I was a little frustrated but I put on my calming music, took a moment to collect myself and got on and rode my horse. I ended up tuning out my instructor, because sometimes her trying to talk me through things just distracts me and gets me more frustrated because I'm trying but the pieces just won't fall together and I end up over riding and not just doing it like you need to. When I tuned out distractions and just rode it was perfect. She picked up both her leads (which is a miracle because I've literally spent three years trying to get her to pick up her right lead and only in the last few months have we actually gotten it) and we jumped a bit without me feeling like I was dying. Which isn't normal since I'm not really a jumper. Pony, of course, loves to jump. She locks in on them and just has a blast. I think she likes the challenge of having to figure them out, she's very smart and I think if she was human she'd love puzzles.

She also actually changed leads on her own through a little combo across the diagonal which is great, again she really thinks and figures out patterns which is why I think she loves the challenge that jumping provides. One of the ladies at the barn actually complemented me at the end of my lesson and said it looked really good, which is always awesome to hear even though I feel like I'm flopping around all over the place and look like a total idiot all the time.

So in summary it was almost the perfect ride. My instructor was almost speechless, which is very rare, and actually had to change up her lesson plan because we did so well. Hopefully I'll be able to bring the same energy to each ride and we'll really be able to get somewhere. Pony, of course, got many peppermints and chips after the ride since she was such a good girl. Treats are her favorite thing.

Kids and their Ponies

I love my Pony, I really, really do but there's something special about the way a little girl can love a pony that's different than the way I do. They don't see the flaws (would literally kill for an apple and has bucking fits in new places) just how awesome they are. And my Pony is awesome. She really does try, and is always brave for me, and she even tolerates all the silly costumes I dress her in.

She loved her Halloween costume... 

At my barn there's a little girl who's older sister has a horse who is just in love with my Pony. She asks to ride her almost every day and I just can't say no. Not when they get along so well. Its always been a dream of mine to find a little kid to lease Pony and take her to shows and love her just as much as I do and this little girl just might be the one. After all, Pony seems to like kids more than me most days.

Couldn't have anything to do with the hats...

Since she loves Pony so much she's riding her in the schooling show the barn is putting on this month and a day or two ago she told me it was the best birthday present ever. I, being a giant sap of a person, almost cried from pride. To think that three years ago my little girl was deemed unfit for a lesson program and sold to me by people who didn't think she was worth much and probably would have auctioned her off to who knows where if I hadn't bought her. Now she's loved by men and by many children and one of the best horses we have in our lesson program.

I can't wait to see her ridden by this little girl in the show, I might actually cry when I do see it, and I can't wait to see where she takes me and every other little girl who loves her just as much as I do next. Everyone who has a horse thinks their horses is the greatest one in the world, and I know that in the grand scheme of things she isn't that special, but to me she's worth anything and everything.

The Beginning

Look, 3'3"!

In life you often have to take risks, so instead of going to college I decided to take the leap into being a working student in the hopes of becoming a barn manager. My horse, or rather my large riding pony, is named (very creatively might I add) Pony and is a 13 hand paint welsh thing. Together we're figuring out what we want to do with our first ever show season and of course the rest of our lives. As we all know the horse world is never easy. So get ready for tons of posts about me trying to decide if I want to do hunters, dressage, equitation, or who knows what else I might want to do with my life.