Thursday, November 22, 2018

October Goals Analysis

Winter's here!
Well it's almost the end of November and I never got this posted since I was waiting on more media. I'm going to go ahead and post this anyway and should be able to post the next one at a more appropriate time :)

Also, happy Thanksgiving!

My goals for October are to get back to more consistency. I don’t really care what I accomplish but I at least want to go through the motions with the following things.

-Get to the barn 4-5 times per week
               I did pretty well with this. There was a week where I made it out a solid 5 times but there were at least two weeks were I was at the barn 4 times. I didn’t ride as much as I hoped but the goal wasn’t to ride a certainly amount of time, rather it was to just go.

-Groom better
                I did pretty well with this one. I trimmed Katai’s mane, took better care of her tail, trimmed her bridle path, and a few weeks ago I got her partially clipped!

Time to start watching Christmas movies clearly :)

-Dress like we mean it (both me and Katai)
                Katai has been looking like a million dollars with matching polos, saddle pads, and browbands. I haven’t been looking as put together partially because I’m still figuring out the whole going straight to the barn from work thing. I’ve typically been trying to wear the same top throughout the day (thank goodness for not having a dress code at work) and then I just put on breeches at the end of the day. It does mean that I’m wearing my most work appropriate tops though which don’t always go well with my breeches but oh well.

-Take two lessons
                Nope but there were scheduling difficulties on both sides and I was really glad that my coach agreed with me on not trying to take a lesson when I knew that Katai’s ulcers were bothering her.

-Have barefoot trimmer friend check my hoof improvement work (third week in October)
                Done and I got some praise on how nice Katai’s feet were looking!

-Build up to Katai wearing the BoT sheet for longer periods
                Yep!

I haven't decorated our apartment yet
but the decorations where I work are very festive.
On to November:
For November I’m hoping to get pretty much back to where we were when I left Jane’s
-Get to the barn 5+ times per week
-Make sure at least 1-2 of those times are not riding and work on other necessary things such as ground work, trailer loading(?), etc.
-Take two more lessons
-Continue with grooming better as possible with fluffy pony

Monday, November 5, 2018

Past Year Changes

So many changes have happened over the past year or so that I wanted to sort of summarize where we are now especially since I haven’t been good about updating my blog this year!

My new, much more limited, shared
tack set up in one small corner of the tack room
Tack:
- Fleece TSF Stretchtec girth liner
I love this thing! I worked really well for the pale skinned princess this summer and kept away the skin funk/girth galls that she’s occasionally picked up the past with her leather liner. It’s nice and fluffy without adding too much bulk and despite my minor misgivings that it would make my saddle more unstable it actually was fine probably in part due to the shape of the TSF girth.


- PS of Sweden reins
I’m not totally sold on these yet. I like how slim they are with my tiny hands and appreciate how soft they are but they’re thinner than traditional leather reins and less “sticky” so without my gloves they would slip right through my hands and even with my gloves I feel like I need to use more energy to hold them. Because they’re so thin they also twist so even when I don’t have them twisted they’re not straight between the bit and my hands and that drives me a little batty. I’m still using them and overall I like them but for the cost I probably would have stuck with my cheapo ($20ish) Horze plain black pony reins.

- Bates “webber” style leathers
I totally love these! I was in the camp of not being able to feel the additional bulk from regular leathers, or at least not until I switched to these. Now I can clearly feel a difference and I’m happy to put up with the slight additional fussiness of running these up for that really close contact feeling. I’m also thrilled that my leathers finally are black to match my saddle.


I'm very glad that grass is now only available when hand grazing
Feed:
- CA Trace
As I was falling further down the barefoot rehab rabbit hole I found out a lot more about diet and with some help from FeedXL made some big changes to what Katai is eating. She’s now getting CA Trace pellets and since I can’t get those through Smartpak I’ve canceled my smartpaks. I am getting Magnesium 5000 through them still but I’m getting the bucket on auto ship vs. the smartpaks. She’s also getting whole flax seed and plain white salt. That’s it! Her coat and feet are looking really good so I’m pleased with everything right now.

- Treats
I found some great low sugar treats that don’t break the bank so I’ve gone from feeding peppermints (which she was getting a decent amount of over the summer) to these apple treats just to try to reduce the sugar content in her diet further


Luckily the arena is nicely well lit since
most of my rides take place after dark at this point
Routine:
With so many life changes my routine has changed quite a bit this year. First I completely fell out of any routine haha. However, now that she’s so much closer and everything is quieting down a bit in my personal life I’m finding my routine again and I’m really loving our new schedule!

- Weekday Commute
At this point I’ve transitioned to going to the barn directly from work. Not only is the barn closer to my workplace than home (by maybe 10 minutes or so) but by going straight there from work I save the worst commute I have which is from work home during rush hour. This easily saves me 45+ minutes in the car and because of that I’m getting home from the barn around 6:30 which means that my full day away from home is long but I now have the rest of the evening free. 

Katai's new paddock. I love that she has a buddy and shelter!


- Weekend Schedule
With that instead of going both weekend mornings and 3 evenings during the week I’ve transitioned to going 4 evenings and one weekend day typically in the morning. This is allowing my bf and myself more flexibility on the weekend plus because I’m getting home so much earlier when I go during the week we just have more flexibility in general.

- Lesson Schedule
This has been a tricky one. With everything going on it’s been oddly tough to have a weekly commitment on a specific day. Not only does it limit when and how we plan to do things at home or go out on dates, see friends, etc. but it locks in the rest of my riding schedule since I typically want to ride at least the day before and preferably two days before my lesson and normally I give her the day after off. In addition I’ve been trying to be better about sticking to a budget. Moving to a barn where I’m spending less and saving on gas have both been helpful but lessons are a huge expense that I’ve also been trying to reduce. With that at this point I’m taking e/o week lessons on Tuesday evenings. This, so far, has been the right combination of routine enough to help with my motivation to get to the barn while also allowing for flexibility. I’m good at working on riding homework and since we’re both lacking strength a lot of what I’m doing is basically bringing her back into work so the additional time between lessons right now is actually really helpful.

Looking so much better! Ignore the white paste,
we're using baby rash ointment as a moisture barrier

Feet:
-As mentioned previously I’ve taken over doing Katai’s feet and one of my goals in October was to have a mentor and friend stop by and check my work. She did and felt that Katai’s feet looked really good! She had some great suggestions for me and she’s going to do a re-check in 6 or so weeks and then likely I’ll have her out more ocassionally.

I really like this barn. It's nice and airy and open and kept extremely clean.

Hopefully Back On Track

 It has been such a long time since I posted anything here! There has been a lot going on with Killian over the past several months and I...